Mediating Discourse Online (AILA Applied Linguistics Series, Volume 3)

Mediating Discourse Online

AILA Applied Linguistics Series (AALS) The AILA Applied Linguistics Series (AALS) provides a forum for scholars in any area of Applied Linguistics. The series aims at representing the field in its diversity. It covers different topics in applied linguistics from a multidisciplinary approach and it aims at including different theoretical and methodological perspectives. As an official publication of AILA the series will include contributors from different geographical and linguistic backgrounds. The volumes in the series should be of high quality; they should break new ground and stimulate further research in Applied Linguistics.

Editor Jasone Cenoz

University of the Basque Country, Spain

Editorial Board Jean-Marc Dewaele

Rosa Manchón

Gabrielle Hogan-Brun

Anne Pakir

University of London, UK University of Bristol, UK

Nancy Hornberger

University of Pennsylvania, US

Volume 3 Mediating Discourse Online Edited by Sally Sieloff Magnan

University of Murcia, Spain National University of Singapore, Singapore

Mediating Discourse Online Edited by

Sally Sieloff Magnan University of Wisconsin, Madison

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mediating discourse online / edited by Sally Sieloff Magnan. p. cm. (AILA Applied Linguistics Series, issn 1875-1113 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis--Computer-assisted instruction. 2. Communication--Data processing. 3. Language and languages--Computer-assisted instruction. 4. Intercultural communication--Computer-assisted instruction. I. Magnan, Sally Sieloff. P302.26.M43    2008 401'.410785--dc22 isbn 978 90 272 0519 3 (Hb; alk. paper)

2007052232

© 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Sally Sieloff Magnan

vii 1

Part I. Overview of existing research Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments Dorothy M. Chun

15

Research perspectives on online discourse and foreign language learning Carl S. Blyth

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Part II. Creating collaboration Postcards from the (turbulent) edge (of chaos): Complexity theory  and computer mediated communication Neil H. Johnson

73

Interpersonal and intercultural understanding in a blended  second culture classroom Kara McBride and Mary E. Wildner-Bassett

93

Creating comfort zones of orality in online discussion forums Anja Wanner

125

Part III. Co-constructing interactions Use of communication strategies in a synchronous CMC environment Claudia R. Kost Online discourse strategies: A longitudinal study of computer-mediated  foreign language learning Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl

153

191

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Mediating Discourse Online

Negotiating meaningfulness: An enhanced perspective on interaction  in computer-mediated foreign language learning environments Jonathon Reinhardt

219

Foreign language resistance: Discourse analysis of online classroom  peer interaction Robin Worth

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Part IV. Mediating social spaces Using instant messaging interaction (IMI) in intercultural learning Li Jin Transcultural communication in open Internet environments  and massively multiplayer online games Steven L. Thorne

275

305

Part V. Ethical ramifications of work in online environments Online interactions and L2 learning: Some ethical challenges  for L2 researchers Lourdes Ortega and Eve Zyzik

331

Index

357

Acknowledgements

The studies presented in this volume are drawn primarily from research presented at the tri-annual meeting of the International Association of Applied Linguistics held in Madison, Wisconsin in July 2005. The papers by Chun, Blyth, Thorne, and Ortega and Zyzik have been added. I recognize here the reviewers of the papers submitted for consideration for inclusion: Julie Belz, Heidi Byrnes, Monika Chavez, Gabrielle Kasper, Richard Kern, Robert Kleinsasser, Claire Kramsch, Yong Lang, James Lantolf, Diane Larsen-Freeman, Glenn Levine, Hiram Maxim, Numa Markee, Sachiko Matsunaga, Mary McGroarty, Lourdes Ortega, Sue Otto, Virginia Scott, Bryan Smith, Steven Thorne, Leo van Lier, and Richard Young. Their careful critique of the manuscripts, and the authors’ subsequent revisions, contributed greatly to the quality of the final versions of the chapters. For her careful checking of references and APA style, I am grateful to Paula Rucks, an advanced doctoral student in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I recognize Sue Lightfoot for preparing the index. I also thank Richard Young (University of Wisconsin, Madison), who chaired the 2005 AILA conference, for the impetus to develop a volume springing from it, and Jasone Cenoz (AILA publications coordinator; University of the Basque Country, Spain) for her collaboration in conceiving the topic of this collection from the many subjects addressed at the conference, and her support throughout its publication. Finally, I thank the authors for the stimulating reading their chapters have provided to me, and John Benjamins Publishing Company for bringing them to the profession.

Introduction Sally Sieloff Magnan

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Over the last three decades information and communication technology has rapidly transformed our notions of literacy and of how information is created and exchanged. Warschauer (2005) explains the multi-dimensional expansiveness of this change. By providing interactive written communication, technologies such as instant messaging and chat lead us to question traditional borders between speech and writing. By allowing the creation of hypertexts, blogging, wikis, and other web-based technologies challenge traditional forms of narrative because they bring together information in new ways. By their simple ways of combining text, image, sounds, and video, multimedia technologies challenge the exclusionary dominance of the written word. Most importantly, by facilitating a global form of many-to-many communication, technologies, such as blogs, bulletin board discussion fora, and recently facebook, have changed literacy practices around the world. To Warschauer’s (2005) compelling image of how technology has transformed human interaction, we might add Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, and Gee’s (2004) contention that technology is also changing how its users think, solve problems, and learn, that is, how they create new ways to make knowledge and process it. For example, people who play video games confront multiple-path information networks, learn to use hypothesis testing to solve problems, confront multiple solutions, and engage in the imaginary social and cultural worlds of the game. According to Gee, these worlds, and the pathways through them, help game players learn by integrating thinking, social interaction, and technology. Technology is reconstituting how we communicate, making it possible to exchange information and to create new meaning collaboratively in new ways and at new rhythms. Our discourse both reflects the technology in which it was created and serves to drive technology forward to offer increasingly new ways to communicate. Through online discourse, we build new digital communities, such as MOO environments and online multiplayer gaming, for which users must develop new discourses in order to belong. Because our ways of communicating



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influence how we learn and how we process knowledge, online discourse influences societal development. It is an opportune time to intensify our study of these new communication mediums. Howe and Strauss (2000) identified the generation born from 1982 as Millennial youth, a generation that has grown up as native users of digital technologies. These digitals natives are now entering the workforce in large numbers and having a new generation of children who will not know life, or its literacy practices, in an age without computers. In comparison to preceding generations, this group makes much less separation between learning in the formal institution of school and learning, often through the Internet, at home (cf. Levin & Arafeh 2002). Responding to the technologies that are increasingly at their disposal, members of the Millennial generation communicate in multiple discourses for varied environments and communicative needs. Through these discourses they enter and create new digital communities in which they engage intensely and often passionately. Are these discourses in some ways different from those occurring in face-to-face encounters or in written mediums which are less interactive in nature? How do these discourses function in terms of building knowledge, developing communities, and shaping individual identities? Researchers studying online interaction are struggling to keep pace with the increasing richness of communication in the rapidly expanding digital environment. In the study of second language (L2) learning, in particular, the need to understand how learners collaborate in mediating discourse online is quite acute. Thorne (2006) describes research by Hanna and de Nooy (2003) to illustrate how “participation in open and thematically oriented Internet communities supports the very processes L2 education ostensibly seeks to provide, such as the use of language as a resource for ongoing identity formation and personally meaningful communication in the service of goals that extend beyond ‘practice’ or ‘learning’ in the restrictive senses associated with institutional settings” (p. 14). Taking up the notion of discursive practice, Young (2007) redefines ‘practice’ in terms that would be compatible with the type of collaboration in digital environments that is reshaping contemporary society. For Young, “The practice is what is learned, not the language” (p. 265). Learning language is not the goal of discourse. Rather, the goal is to change how one participates in a community; language is a tool needed for engaging in a social interaction, whether it is an online game, an online chat, or a face-to-face encounter. Following Lave and Wenger (1991) and Sfard (1998), Young sees learning as changing participation. Important research questions would include: How might we characterize participation in digital environments, which vary greatly one from another and are constantly evolving? How does interaction in these environments determine community membership and participation? How does language function in collaboration and encounters



Introduction

online? What characterizes discourse competence in online environments, and is that competence different in online and face-to-face interactions? Interaction always exists, of course, within a cultural frame. For L2 learning this frame is by nature intercultural. The chapters in this volume confront crosscultural expectations and consequences by examining how users of digital media collaboratively create discourse that leads them across cultural borders and reshapes their perceptions of others and self. The questions we might pose become more far reaching: What strategies do learners need in order to create discourse in intercultural exchanges online? From a learner’s point of view, how do digital media function in facilitating collaboration, in creating solidarity, and in building and maintaining intercultural connections? What is it in the discourse, and in how it is created, that provides insight on the self and the other? How does the opportunity of online exchange influence how social structures within and across cultures develop? What theories of inquiry best allow researchers to gain insight into these questions, which are so contextually sensitive and socially based? Confronting such questions, especially in terms of L2 learning, we are led to reconsider many traditional components of instructed learning situations: instructor and student roles; instructional tools and how learning is carried out; the place of culture in the language curriculum; the syllabus of instruction; and expectations for learning and means of recognizing it. We are also led to interrogate the boundaries between instructed and non-instructed learning through digital channels. In 1996, Warschauer (1996, 2002) acknowledged that the computer in education has gradually been transformed from a tutor to a tool. The chapters in this volume explore the nature of that tool and especially the interaction, collaboration, and learning that occur through its use. The studies presented in the volume rely on a variety of theoretical approaches, from Reinhardt’s comparison of interactionist and sociocultural perspectives to Worth’s ethnographic microanalysis to Johnson’s use of dynamic systems or complexity theory and McBride and Wildner-Bassett’s frame within a critical social-constructivist approach to pedagogy. Taken as a whole, they suggest an ecological heuristic for investigating online discourse and the knowledge and behaviors that come through it. The chapters consider issues of communicative strategies, negotiation of face and solidarity, voice, and social identity through the lenses of a variety of digital modes (bulletin boards, course management systems, chats, instant messaging, and online gaming). As its title, Mediating Discourse Online, suggests the review pieces and studies presented focus on how discourse is constructed collaboratively and how that mediated exchange results in creating new ways of thinking and interacting. Although the volume considers primarily the discourse of L2 learners, the studies are not limited to instructed environments or to interactions of language





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learners. Two chapters (Wanner; McBride & Wildner-Bassett) offer studies where participants are not identified as language learners and two chapters (Jin; Thorne) present studies where native speakers and non-native speakers interact in social spaces. This mix of ecologies for online discourse offers provocative insights for language instructors and researchers, who are seen as the primary audiences for this collection. The volume is presented in five parts, the first of which offers an overview of existing research. First Dorothy Chun offers a careful analysis of what previous studies have taught us about learner interaction in instructed, computer-mediated environments. She begins by addressing the thorny questions of how online discourse resembles face-to-face interaction and how instructed discourse resembles naturally occurring online communication. Then, looking to SLA research from both interactionist and sociocultural perspectives, her review surveys the professional literature to ask: How have instructors helped students create extended discourse online and reflect on that activity? Chun’s review and analysis makes it clear that many logistical, pedagogical, and social factors are at play when learners communicate online. Instructors, she warns, must never assume that providing opportunities for intercultural communication will necessarily afford target language interaction or that this interaction will automatically result in learners developing linguistic or cultural competence. Although digital environments offer much recognized potential for implementing the National Standards for Foreign Language Education (ACTFL 1996), the profession needs to develop, Chun advises, a more appropriate theoretical framework for using computer-mediated communication in foreign language learning. In a second review chapter, Carl Blyth takes us on an historical journey through metaphors used to conceptualize technology-based language learning to demonstrate how our scholarly thinking has opened progressively to social factors involved in language learning. Seeing the internet as a major social factor in today’s world, Blyth positions technology-based research as reflections of how SLA scholars have viewed and studied language learning through the past several decades. He offers a taxonomy of four theoretical approaches to researching online discourse – technological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and ecological – with the goal of uncovering the most salient research directions for the near future. Like many authors in this volume, Blyth sees an ecological approach as the most promising of the theoretical stances he reviews due to its holistic nature, which recognizes a symbiotic relationship between the cognitive and the social. The Internet, he concludes “has not caused change so much as it has hastened changes that were already well underway in the profession. In particular, the rise of the Internet has coincided with a documented paradigm shift towards social approaches to language learning, that is, a shift from a psycholinguistic approach



Introduction

to a sociocultural approach to, more recently, an ecological approach” (p. 66–67). As it becomes increasingly commonplace for language learners to enter online social spaces, online discourse may become the norm for communicative as well as instructional practices. Studying diverse digital environments, which are becoming increasingly blended, is an imperative for research. Online data should no longer be considered a special, or unique body set apart by its unusual environment, but rather a critical body of inquiry at the basis of how we communicate and learn. Chun’s and Blyth’s chapters prepare readers for the nine, new research studies that follow. These studies use different media for online interaction (bulletin boards, course management systems, chats, instant messaging, and online gaming) to reveal how learners create collaborative digital spaces in which they explore issues of identity, voice, and joint problem-solving; how they co-construct interactions and how these interactions are influenced by the ecology in which they occur; and how they establish and mediate social spaces in which they explore intercultural notions. Based in different theoretical stances, the studies, as a whole, point to insights gained from an ecological approach to studying how interactants engage in discourse online. The second section, “Creating collaboration,” includes three studies that used online bulletin boards and course management systems as platforms for fostering social dynamics and written exchanges fundamental to learning course content. The first two of these chapters come from work at the University of Arizona. In his chapter, “Postcards from the (Turbulent) Edge (of Chaos): Complexity Theory and Computer Mediated Communication,” Neil H. Johnson uses the lens of dynamic systems or complexity theory to explore how a computer-mediated learning environment might foster interdependence and collaboration among students. These participants (native and high-level nonnative speakers of English enrolled in two graduate seminars) made asynchronous postings on WebCT to debate theoretical issues arising during class discussions or readings and also to manage the class-based collaborative work. Johnson demonstrates how participants created an online learning community through which they explored new perspectives on their own lives and the similarities and differences between their life experiences and those of their classmates, while at the same time discussing texts about people from the German-speaking world. The thoughtful analysis illustrates the potential of the dynamic systems theoretical framework to enhance our understanding of the complex and nonlinear aspects of language learning as interactive social processes and practices. It shows how large restructuring of the learning community can be triggered by the smallest of interventions within the system and how online and face-to-face encounters stimulate each other and interaction in a course context.





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In a similar vein, Kara McBride and Mary Wildner-Bassett’s chapter “Interpersonal and Intercultural Understanding in a Blended Second Culture Classroom,” explores the evolution of the voices, social identities, and intercultural perceptions of undergraduate students enrolled in a course entitled Dialogue of the Sexes: Women and Men in German-speaking Societies. The course, which is used to fulfill requirements in the category of Gender, Race, Class, Ethnicity, or Non-Western Area Studies, involved blended face-to-face interaction with online bulletin board postings through the course management system Desire 2 Learn. It enrolled mostly Americans who were native speakers of English but also two American and two international students whose English was proficient but not native. Not directed then to learning language, McBride and Wildner-Bassett’s study examined how U.S. students developed interpersonal and intercultural understanding by exploring texts about people from the German-speaking world through collaboration and discussion with classmate peers. Their chapter presents data from written remarks made in bulletin board postings and on end-of-course surveys to provide compelling testimony to how students developed social identities that were more open to cultural difference and to how the online environment promoted sociality, criticality, and co-construction which led to shifts of individual perspective in intercultural understanding. McBride and Wildner-Bassett situate their study within a critical social-constructivist approach to pedagogy, offering a compelling argument that research and teaching need to look widely at the ecology of learning. Giving an additional view of how participants negotiate social spaces online, Anja Wanner examines discourse organization in Internet discussion forums to reveal how users alter bulletin board protocols to transform these asynchronous spaces into environments that emulate features of more interactive, synchronous chat. Her chapter, “Creating Comfort Zones of Orality in Online Discussion Forums,” begins by explaining how bulletin boards would seem to invite conceptually less oral forms of communication than do chatrooms (cf. chapters by Kost, Van Deusen-Scholl, Reinhardt, and Worth). Her study of the forum of the German weekly Die Zeit then demonstrates that even in these asynchronous, public environments, users attempt to become members of a discourse community by creating and maintaining spaces where they can engage in personalized and active interactions. The third section of the volume, “Co-constructing interactions,” examines the chat environment directly. Two chapters explore communication strategies that students use when mediating discourse online. From these studies we see the value of the digital environment for providing space to negotiate and create meaning collaboratively, especially when difficulties in communication arise. The first study, “Use of Communication Strategies in a Synchronous CMC Environ-



Introduction

ment,” by Claudia Kost, investigates how beginning learners of German doing role plays in computer-mediated chats co-construct meaning and negotiate interactions. The results confirm the use of strategies by these beginning learners and point to several factors that influence the amount and kind of strategies used: students’ familiarity with the topic of the role play, the specificity of the topic, students’ knowledge of vocabulary and structures required to do the role play, and their proficiency level. They also confirm that students are able to self-monitor while they create meaning through online interactions, even at the beginning stages of language learning. In the chapter, “Online Discourse Strategies: A Longitudinal Study of Computer-Mediated Foreign Language Learning,” Nelleke Van Deusen-Scholl explores the discourse strategies that beginning and advanced German learners used in online interactions with peers and their instructors. She sought to relate strategy use in online environments with the learning process as measured by success in the associated language courses. It is not surprising that she found that students who used communicative strategies more consistently during online interactions were more successful in their language courses (i.e., they earned higher grades and performed better on a final oral interview task) than students who used strategies less often. More specifically, she found that more successful learners made more frequent attempts to incorporate newly acquired structures and vocabulary into their online conversations, which led them to produce more language of greater syntactic complexity. In addition, they actively sought more feedback and correction, were more aware of their own learning, and engaged in more self-reflection than students who used fewer strategies. This study demonstrates the positive relationship between the ability to mediate conversational interactions online and overall learning achievement. As we look to incorporate online components to instruction – such as through hybrid courses taught partly online and partly in classrooms – or even as we ponder replacing class-based courses with virtual ones, this study offers compelling evidence that online interaction provides opportunities that contribute to language learning. Through these two chapters, online chatting is seen as a productive and creative environment for negotiating meaning as part of language learning. Reflecting back to the taxonomy of research provided by Blyth, readers might wonder what different theoretical lenses might bring to such analyses of chat data. Offering such a comparison in his chapter, “Negotiating Meaningfulness: An Enhanced Perspective on Interaction in Computer-mediated Foreign Language Learning Environments,” Jonathon Reinhardt reanalyzed chat data from Belz’s (2006) corpus of German and English telecollaborative data, from both an interactionist and a sociocognitive perspective. Focusing on two dyads of language learners (each with one German native speaker and one American student who was learning German),





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he explored whether Varonis and Gass’s (1985) original negotiation for meaning model may require extension or alteration for interaction in digital environments. His interesting comparison demonstrates that while an interactionist framework reveals self-noticing and use of task-appropriate responses, a sociocognitive framework is needed to understand greater issues in the ecology of learning, specifically negotiation of face and solidarity, which are fundamental to making meaning. The sociocognitive interpretation is shown to enhance, rather than contradict, an interactionist analysis of negotiation for meaning. Through this comparison, Reinhardt argues for the complementarities of the two perspectives as applied to how learners mediate discourse online, and adds support to Blyth’s suggestion that future research would benefit from a an ecological heuristic. In line with an ecological perspective, Robin Worth offers a critical ethnographic microanalysis of a beginning-level Italian class engaged in online chat. Her chapter, “Foreign Language Resistance: Discourse Analysis of Online Classroom Peer Interaction,” considers learner resistance to instructional policies and a discourse adopted by the instructor. The data demonstrate the different individual approaches that learners took in their participation, such as code-switching between Italian and English and playing dumb, and how the chatroom functioned for them as a pedagogical safe house (Pratt 1991; Canagarajah 1997) where they could express frustrations and resistance to what they perceived as instructors’ discourse of power. Worth’s analysis effectively extends the notion of resistance from learning situations associated with linguistic or cultural imperialism to those associated with foreign language learning. It also extends the notion of resistance from face-to-face encounters to the online environment, where, as Worth shows, resistance may surface even more readily. Taken together, these four studies of discourse found in the chatroom suggest the fertility of the online environment for fostering diverse processes involved in human interaction: mediating understanding and learning through strategy use, monitoring language, negotiating face and solidarity, and resisting discourses perceived to threaten the self and how the individual prefers to learn and communicate with others. The fourth section, “Mediating Social Spaces,” includes a study by Li Jin on using instant messaging as an intercultural learning tool and one by Steven Thorne about online gaming. These digital environments are usually seen as extra-curricular. Their inclusion in this volume reinforces the findings of the other studies, which show that online interaction contributes to making meaning in a way that explores the self. Mediating discourse online is thus a means of learning toward personal growth. In the chapter, “Using Instant Messaging Interaction (IMI) in Intercultural Learning,” Li Jin examines instant messaging interactions between beginning-



Introduction

level Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners and Chinese native speakers. Using an intercultural sensitivity scale, dyadic IMI transcripts, and interviews, Jin found that through their IMI exchanges CFL learners gained sensitivity to intercultural differences, engaged in critical thinking and self-reflection, and increased their confidence in intercultural communication as well as developed positive attitudes toward intercultural differences. Like other authors in this volume, Jin argues that online encounters provide useful tools for language learners, especially, in this case, for intercultural learning even at beginning levels of instruction provided that purposeful tasks are thoughtfully selected and developed. Steven Thorne moves us out of the classroom to examine online gaming and open Internet environments as informal settings for L2 use and development in his chapter “Transcultural communication in open Internet environments and massively multiplayer online games.” Using the game World of Warcraft as his primary example, he shows how this context can offer meaningful communicative activity for participants and thus a new environment for mediating discourse online. The gaming environment is important for understanding how learners create and share discourses online because it is so different from the school environment. In fact, Thorne explores the problematic divide between the goals and processes of conventional schooling and how students use discourse in their interpersonal, recreational, and professional lives. It is clear from his discussion that researchers need to continue exploring this new media genre and its selective inclusion into instructed L2 pedagogy, processes, and curricula. To close the volume, Lourdes Ortega and Eve Zyzik offer a compelling wakeup call to researchers through their exploration of the ethical ramifications of our work in online environments. Reminding us that cultural sites of online mediation are not neutral, they portray and discuss ethical challenges related to how encounters take place online and also to the cultural assumptions that we routinely make about the linguistic and cultural benefits of L2 computer-mediated interactions. Is lurking online appropriate as a way to enter a conversational space as a researcher or as a language learner? What are the borders of the researcherresearched relation in an environment that we have considered (perhaps falsely) to reduce power differentials between participants? Taking a close look at interactions, they further question the notion that productivity increases in online environments and that learners are able to exercise more agency over their personal involvement in encounters done online than in face-to-face situations. Indeed, they ask even the most basic, compelling questions: Is production and participation always good for language learning? How are speakers situated in the online world, as native speakers or as language learners? Under what circumstances, and with what effects, can learners join local online communities? Are there limits to how online interaction promotes



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cross-cultural understanding? How are cultural values and social identities played out when mediating encounters online, especially when transformed by avatars and varied social posturing? How does research take into account the fact that these values and identities are never fixed but rather are continually constructed and reconstructed? Perhaps less surprising but equally compelling, Ortega and Zyzik also focus our attention on standards of conduct for research, including informed consent, anonymity, validity, and researcher-researched relations. Resolving these issues is grounded in how we view digital spaces: Are they public spaces, archival spaces, or more similar to on-the-street or in-the-classroom encounters? Is the role of researcher that of involved interactant or detached observer, and how does this relationship play out in the online environment? As a first step in responding to these serious questions, Ortega and Zyzik wisely recommend that we heighten our sensitivity to issues of participation, reticence, cultural norms, and agency as we investigate how learners mediate discourse in online interactions. They call for researchers to collect multiple kinds of data and use mixed-research methodologies. It is clear from their presentation that research must confront not only these ethical issues inherent in the research process, but also those related to the transmission of research findings into pedagogical recommendations for language education. This volume provides a collection of such research studies that offer analyses of the ecology of online communication as it occurs in various digital forums, through different languages, and with users having different levels of proficiency. It attests to the ever-increasing need to understand how language is created and meaning is made in online environments. In our rapidly expanding digital world, our discourse will be increasingly online. It is imperative that we come to understand how it occurs, how it develops, and the impact that the act of its creation has on our thinking and intercultural understanding.

References ACTFL (1996). National Standards for Foreign Language Education: Preparing for the 21st Century. Alexandria, VA: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Belz, J. (2006). At the intersection of telecollaboration, learner corpus analysis, and L2 pragmatics: Considerations for language program direction. In J. Belz & S. Thorne (Eds.), Internetmediated intercultural foreign language education (pp. 207–246). Boston, MA: Heinle. Canagarajah, A. S. (1997). Safe houses in the contact zone: Coping strategies of African-American students in the academy. College Composition and Communication, 48, 173–196. Hanna, B. & de Nooy, J. (2003). A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: Electronic discussion and foreign language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 7(1), 71–85.



Introduction

Howe, N. & Strauss, W. (2000). Millennials rising: the next great generation. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: CUP. Levin, D. & Arafeh, S. (2002). The digital disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pratt, M. (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession, 91, 33–40. Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one. Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4–13. Shaffer, D. W., Squire K., Halverson, R., & Gee, J. (2004). Video games and the future of learning. Accessed October 11, 2007 at http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/gappspaper1. pdf Thorne, S. (2006). New technologies and additional language learning. CALPER Working Paper No. 7, November. Varonis, E. & Gass, S. (1985). Non-native/non-native conversations: A model for negotiation of meaning. Applied Linguistics, 6, 71–90. Warschauer, M. (2005). Hybrid literacy texts and practices in technology-intensive environments. International Journal of Educational Research, 43, 432–445. Warschauer, M. (2002). A developmental perspective on technology in language education. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 453–475. Warschauer, M. (1996). Computer-assisted language learning: An introduction. In S. Fotos (Ed.), Multimedia language teaching (pp. 3–20). Tokyo: Logos. Young, R. (2007). Language learning and teaching as discursive practice. In Z. Hua, P. Seedhouse, L. Wei, & V. Cook (Eds.), Language learning and teaching as social interaction (pp. 251–271). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

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part i

Overview of existing research

Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments Dorothy M. Chun

University of California, Santa Barbara

This chapter discusses opportunities afforded by online environments for mediating discourse in instructed second language (L2) environments, that is, how learners both create and reflect on extended L2 discourse using both asynchronous and synchronous forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC). It addresses questions such as whether online discourse is a different from discourse found in foreign language (FL) classrooms, what type of language is used in pedagogical activities, whether exchanges with other cultures require a change in discourse practices, and what interactions among intercultural partners look like. Including an overview of how CMC has been used for teaching language and culture, it focuses on SLA principles that have been implemented in instructional CMC environments (focus on form, negotiation of meaning for improving linguistic competence, development of pragmatic and intercultural communicative competence). Although it might appear that online distance exchanges and collaborations between learners of different cultures is ideal for developing intercultural competence, a growing body of research is documenting both successes and failures of online intercultural exchanges. The chapter concludes with a discussion of challenges we face in mediating discourse in instructed online environments. Studies are repeatedly emphasizing the role of the instructor in raising awareness, in designing appropriate tasks, in monitoring the online collaborations, and in following up on intercultural exchanges. However, the advent of the second-generation Web 2.0, combined with the FL teaching profession’s focus on communication and cultures, propel us toward using CMC for intercultural collaborations, fraught as they may be with difficulties.

Online environments are being used with increasing frequency to aid in the learning of a second language (L2) and particularly of a second culture (C2). The general term for using computers and the Internet to communicate online is Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). Although the term was not coined specifically for language learning, the use of CMC to foster L2 acquisition has

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grown and expanded rapidly during the last two decades, in part because the technology has evolved so quickly and in part because more and more language instructors are integrating the use of technology into their classrooms. In addition, text-based CMC has become part of everyday life and is widely used outside the classroom (e.g., email, bulletin boards, forums, blogs, wikis, instant messaging, chats, etc.). In this chapter, I will first discuss the opportunities offered by online environments for mediating discourse in instructed environments, that is, how we as instructors facilitate student creation of and reflection on extended discourse online. I will then provide an overview of how CMC has been used for teaching language and culture, particularly with regard to how discourse is mediated and developed. Finally, based on previous research and telecollaborative projects, I will discuss the challenges inherent in online communication as well as those that have been identified in actual practice. I will suggest directions for future research and practice in instructed online environments in accordance with Standards-based recommendations for gaining knowledge and understanding of other languages and cultures and with the current focus in the fields of second language acquistion and foreign language education on developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC).

Opportunities Given that language is an essential element of human communication, the question in the 21st century is: How does the Internet and, specifically, CMC alter this role? Ong (1982) suggested a “secondary orality” to explain the blurred distinction between writing and speaking in venues such as email and chatrooms (p. 136). For L2 learning, relevant questions are: Is online discourse a different type of discourse than found in classrooms among students learning an L2 or foreign language (FL)? Are the entries in synchronous chat shorter and more abbreviated than posting to an asynchronous forum or bulletin board? Does an exchange with another culture require a change in the discourse so that it conforms to the particular communication genres of that language and culture? What type of language is used in pedagogical activities, that is, what do interactions among classmates, among intercultural partners look like? What cultural frames must be learned for successful interaction? These questions have been investigated by many researchers and practitioners during the last two decades. The Internet provides the medium for extended discourse and for direct contact with local classmates or with global partners and also compiles records or artifacts of these interactions for use in pedagogical review and as research data. In online intercultural exchanges, native speakers (NSs) provide input with regard to



Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments

both linguistic form and cultural content, and the ensuing interaction with the L2 learners (nonnative speakers, or NNSs) can provide insights into the pragmatics of different communication genres in the target language and culture. If collaborative tasks are assigned, this type of exchange would seem to afford participants an ideal opportunity for extended discussion and discourse. However, despite these obvious and seemingly simple concepts of extended interactions and direct contact with speakers of the FL, research and practice have shown that much effort must be invested by teachers in designing appropriate tasks for learners, in monitoring the online discourse, and in following up in the classroom. In the next section, an overview of selected studies will be presented.

Overview of CMC for SLA Computer-Mediated Communication is defined in Wikipedia as “any form of data exchange across two or more networked computers. More frequently, the term is narrowed to include only those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (i.e., instant messages, emails, chat rooms) between two or more individuals” (“Computer-mediated communication,” 2007: 1). Murray (1995) attributed the coinage of CMC to Hiltz and Turoff (1978) in their classic study of computer conferencing, while others suggested that Harasim (1986) first coined the term and defined it as the exchange of information through electronic means in an educational context (Chao 2000). Regardless of the precise origin of the term, a number of different forms of CMC have been used for L2 learning and teaching, beginning in the early 1990s (see Thorne & Payne 2005). There are two primary modes of CMC that have been examined in the fields of second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language education: asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) and synchronous computermediated communication (SCMC) (see Figure 1). Asynchronous modes include text-based email, bulletin boards, newsgroups, forums, blogs, and wikis; audio- and video-based modes include asynchronous audioboards and videoclips. Synchronous modes include text-based instant messaging, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or simply chat, and multiuser virtual realities (MUDs = Multi User Dimensions/Domains/Dungeons; and MOOs = MUD Object Oriented or Multi-user Object Oriented). Recently, audiobased and videobased CMC programs, in both synchronous and asynchronous modes (e.g., Internet phones, audioconferencing, and videoconferencing) have become more readily accessible (see Cziko & Park 2003; Hampel 2003; Lafford & Lafford 2005; Lamy 2004; Vetter & Chanier 2006; Wang 2004). In addition, the two modes of CMC can be subdivided in two other ways with regard to the interlocutors: first, whether the participants are

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Figure 1.  Modes of CMC

18 Dorothy M. Chun

inter-cultural (N S-NNS) intra-class (N NS-NN S)

Figure 2.  Types of CMC interlocutors

m ulti-person (groups)

inter-cultural (N S-NNS)

Synchronous CM C

one-on-one m ulti-person one-on-one m ulti-person one-on-one m ulti-person one-on-one (dyads) (groups) (dyads) (groups) (dyads) (groups) (dyads)

intra-class (N NS-NN S)

Asynchronous CM C

Com puter-M ediated Com m unication

Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments 19

20 Dorothy M. Chun

Table 1.  SLA principles implemented in instructional CMC SLA principles

Purpose of CMC

focus on form, noticing, corrective feedback interaction, input, and output

linguistic, grammatical development improvement of communicative competence, oral and written proficiency negotiation of meaning co-construction of knowledge/meaning  development of pragmatic competence intercultural exchange/communication

interactionist and sociocultural approaches sociocultural approaches intercultural communicative competence

only NNSs, that is, L2 learners in a class, or whether NNSs interact with L1 NSs in an intercultural exchange; and second, whether it is one-on-one communication between two-person dyads or group communication with multiple participants (see Figure 2). As in any discussion about using technology for educational purposes, the underlying learning theories and goals of instruction must be clarified (see Chapelle 1997, 1998, 2005; Harrington & Levy 2001; Levy 2007). In addition, empirical research must be conducted to identify the processes and outcomes of using particular technologies in the classroom (see Ortega 1997 for a discussion of networked classroom interaction to facilitate SLA). Table 1 shows in the left column key SLA principles that have been demonstated to be important for successful language/culture learning, and in the right column, the corresponding purpose of using CMC to achieve the particular language/culture learning goals. The first two categories represent a generally more cognitive approach to SLA. For cognitive approaches, the mental processes of acquiring the different linguistic components of language (morphosyntactic, phonological, lexical) are of great importance. Researchers are interested in such processes as memory, noticing, automatization, and fossilization. The other three categories intersect with sociocultural approaches to SLA. For sociocultural approaches, language development is essentially a social process. In this view, language is not owned solely by the learner, but is co-constructed with others, and is “also a property of social settings and the interface between person and social context” (Foster & Ohta 2005: 403). In other words, CMC is thought to create “the opportunity for a group to construct knowledge together, thus linking reflection and interaction” (Warschauer 1997: 473). In both approaches, a common goal is to study how learners develop facility in an L2 via social interaction. In this chapter, I will summarize selected studies that deal with extended discourse produced online by L2 learners (see Table 2).

Studies

Abrams 2003; González-Bueno 1998; Kitade 2000; Lai & Zhao 2006; Lamy & Goodfellow 1999; Pellettieri 2000; Smith 2004; Sotillo 2000 Abrams 2003; Beauvois 1998; Bohlke 2003; Chun 1994; Fiori 2005; Fitze 2006; Kelm 1992; Kern 1995; Lee 2002; Salaberry 2000; Sotillo 2000; Sullivan & Pratt 1996; Tudini 2005; Wang 2004, 2007; Warschauer 1996 Belz & Kingiger 2003; Lee 2006; Sotillo 2005 Improvement of Cononelos & Oliva 1992; Dussias 2006; Hauck & Hampel 2005 communicative Abrams 2003; Beauvois 1992, 1997; Chun 1994; Dussias 2006; competence, oral Hampel & Hauck 2004; Kelm 1992; Lamy 2004; Payne & Ross and written profi- 2005; Payne & Whitney 2002; Tudini 2005; Vetter & Chanier 2006; Weininger & Shield 2004 ciency Dussias 2006 Negotiation for Kitade 2006 meaning Blake 2000; Hauck & Hampel 2005; Lee 2001, 2002; Smith 2003; Wang 2006 Blake & Zyzik 2003, Kötter 2003; O’Rourke 2005; Tudini 2003 Co-construction of Sotillo 2000 knowledge/mean- Abrams 2003; Chun 1994; Fitze 2006; Sykes 2005 ing, development Belz & Kinginger 2003; Thorne 2003 of pragmatic competence Intercultural See Table 3. exchange/communication

Linguistic, grammatical development

Purpose of CMC

Table 2.  Studies on the use of CMC for SLA Type of Interlocutors Intra-group NNSs Intra-group NNSs

Intercultural NS-NNS Intra-group NNSs Intra-group NNSs

Intercultural NSs-NNSs Intercultural NSs-NNSs Intra-group NNSs Intercultural NSs-NNSs Intra-group NNSs Intra-group NNSs Intercultural NSs-NNSs

Mode of CMC Asynchronous CMC Synchronous CMC

Synchronous CMC Asynchronous CMC Synchronous CMC (Chat/MOO)

Asynchronous & Synchronous CMC Asynchronous CMC Synchronous CMC Synchronous CMC (Chat/MOO) Asynchronous CMC Synchronous CMC Synchronous CMC

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Linguistic competence With regard to the first item in Tables 1 and 2, a number of studies have suggested that online text-based intra-group (NNSs) chatting provides learners with more time and opportunities than face-to-face (FTF) conversations to notice and correct their errors, particularly their linguistic errors, either because they had recognized the errors themselves or because other chatters had pointed out the errors to them (e.g., Kitade 2000; Lai & Zhao 2006; Lamy & Goodfellow 1999; Pellettieri 2000; Smith 2004). Other studies on how computer-assisted classroom discussion (SCMC) can improve linguistic or grammatical development have been conducted, for example, by Beauvois (1998), Bohlke (2003), Kern (1995), Warschauer (1996), who showed that students tend to produce more complex language when chatting than in FTF discussions. Some studies have found greater grammatical accuracy, for example, González-Bueno (1998), who found a higher level of language accuracy in emails from students to their instructor than in FTF output, and Salaberry (2000), who found more accurate usage of past-tense morphological markers in written chat interactions than in oral FTF conversations. A study by Fiori (2005) examined the role that consciousness raising plays in grammatical development in L2 Spanish learners engaged in synchronous CMC. She found that consciousness raising had a greater impact on learning and using por/para and ser/estar in the form-and-meaning focused group than in the group that focused on meaning only. Instead of comparing SCMC to FTF discussions, Sotillo (2000) compared SCMC and ACMC and found that the delayed nature of asynchronous discussions gave learners more opportunities to produce syntactically complex language. In contrast to intraclass CMC, other researchers have investigated the development of linguistic accuracy in intercultural interactions between NSs and NNSs. A recent exploratory study of NS-NNS and NNS-NNS dyads engaged in communicative and problem-solving activities via an instant messaging system by Sotillo (2005) found that NSs provided only indirect corrective feedback focusing primarily on grammatical and lexical errors to L2 learners (NNSs) while NNSs provided more explicit corrective feedback to their peers. There was evidence of successful learner uptake of this feedback, but Sotillo cautioned that the longterm effects of corrective moves must be studied in future research. Lee (2006) also studied synchronous communication between native teachers and NNSs of Spanish, in particular, the relationships among error type, feedback types, and responses. She found that lexical rather than syntactical errors were the main triggers for negotiation moves. However, not all research has yielded unequivocally positive results. Earlier studies by Lee (2001, 2002) had provided tempering evidence about the value of



Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments

online communication for promoting linguistic accuracy. She found that learners tended to ignore each other’s mistakes, focusing on the meaning of the communication rather than the form itself. In addition to investigating linguistic accuracy and complexity, SCMC and FTF discussions within classes have been compared on a number of other dimensions, for example, the amount of language produced. Kern (1995) found that L2 French students produced two to four times more sentences and more words in SCMC discussions than in oral FTF discussions, using several rough measures of language productivity (length of learner output in terms of number of words, sentences, and turns). He also found that the average turn length was similar in both the electronic and nonelectronic condition, but in the electronic mode, simpler, shorter messages tended to elicit more responses than complex, longer ones. In an ESL setting, Sullivan and Pratt (1996) found an increase in learner language production in the electronic mode due to the drastic reduction of teacher talk in favor of student production. More recently, in a study comparing three groups of L2 German learners (a control group, a synchronous CMC group, and an asynchronous CMC group), Abrams (2003) confirmed an increase in quantity of language produced by students in the SCMC group compared to the other two groups, but found that the ACMC group did not outperform the control group. However, in contrast to earlier studies, her analyses of the quality of language indicated no significant differences among the three groups, either lexically or syntactically. Unlike Abrams’ findings, Fitze (2006) reported no statistically significant difference in the total number of words that ESL students produced in real-time FTF versus written electronic conferences within their intact class groups. However, the discourse in synchronous written electronic conferences displayed significantly greater lexical range, suggesting that students were better able to use and practice a wider range of vocabulary in online discussion than in FTF discussions. Another beneficial effect that was reported in the 1990s was that CMC fosters more equality of participation than FTF conversations, that is, participation increases in online CMC with “quieter” students participating as much or even more than those students who normally dominate FTF classroom discussion (see Beauvois 1992; Chun 1994; Kelm 1992; Kern 1995; Sullivan & Pratt 1996; Warschauer 1996). However, a recent study by Fitze (2006) of two intact ESL classes found that in one of the two groups, participation in written electronic conferences was indeed more balanced among students, whereas for the other group, participation was about equally balanced regardless of the conference setting. He speculated that the group dynamics in both classes might have been established prior to the electronic conferences and did not change during the online conferencing. In summary, while the majority of studies have suggested positive effects of CMC in terms of quantity and quality of L2 production, several studies have

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shown no differences between CMC and FTF discussions in terms of noticing linguistic errors, lexical or syntactic complexity, length of discourse produced, or equality of participation.

Oral and written proficiency Research has found CMC discourse to exhibit features of both oral and written language. To summarize briefly, among the characteristics similar to spoken language are the real-time nature of the communication (in SCMC), the use of firstperson, and the informality typical of both synchronous and asynchronous CMC. Characteristics of CMC that resemble writing include the permanent record of the discourse, the lexical density of a page or screen, and the use of punctuation and textual formatting in messages. There are also many unique characteristics of CMC, including simplified registers and syntax, shorter sentences, abbreviations, and the frequency and apparent acceptance of surface errors (see Murray 2000; Smith 2003). In addition, due to the absence of prosodic and paralinguistic features, emoticons and other expressions of emotion are created with symbols and other diacritics. Moreover, turn-taking in electronic conversations includes many more overlaps than in FTF exchanges, and, because chats and forums often involve multiple participants, turn-taking does not happen in chronological order as it does in FTF conversations. But the question at hand is whether and how CMC might be helpful for improving L2 oral or written proficiency, or both. Studies since the early 1990s have reported on the use of both asynchronous and synchronous CMC to improve oral and written proficiency. In a study of an electronic bulletin board on the Internet (ACMC), Cononelos and Oliva (1993) found that one factor in the improved writing of their advanced Italian-language students was the feedback gained by the students from responses of NSs who were not language teachers but who shared a common area of interest with the students. Communicating on the bulletin board allowed for an ongoing conversation between the participants, made the students co-creators of text generated by parties authentically interested in particular subjects, and sparked dialogue between the respondents. Although they did not explicitly examine the transfer of chatting skills to FTF speaking skills, studies of SCMC by Beauvois (1992), Chun (1994), and Kelm (1992) suggested that both the strong resemblance between the types of utterances generated during chats and what would be said in spoken conversation might lead to transfer from synchronous online chats to conversational L2 speech. Later work has shown that real-time, online conversational exchange via text may indirectly help to develop L2 speaking ability (Abrams 2003; Beauvois 1997; Payne &



Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments

Whitney 2002; Tudini 2005; and Weininger & Shield 2004 with regard to MOOdiscourse). To elaborate, Payne and Whitney (2002) conducted a naturalistic experiment to test the hypothesis that synchronous CMC can indirectly improve L2 oral proficiency by developing the same cognitive mechanisms underlying spontaneous conversational speech. Their findings showed that the oral proficiency of participants who spent two of four contact hours per week in a chatroom was significantly higher than participants whose four contact hours were in traditional classrooms. In a follow-up study using working memory as a lens for interpreting patterns of language use in a chatroom and their relation to L2 oral proficiency development, the results reported in Payne and Ross (2005) lent support to the notion that the chatroom may provide a unique form of support (or bootstrapping effect) to certain types of learners, namely those with lower phonological working memory capacity, in developing L2 oral proficiency. In a recent study, Dussias (2006) investigated whether text-based CMC has measurable consequences for the development of FTF oral communication. There were two groups of participants: the intercultural group that engaged in a partnership with NSs in Spain and the group that participated in intraclass electronic discussions. The two groups participated in both synchronous and asynchronous CMC interaction. An analysis of the transcripts of pre- and postsemester ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews suggested that the group that engaged in NS-NNS interactions benefited from the use of CMC tools, and that language learning mediated by these tools appeared to transfer readily to spontaneous oral language production. In summary, research studies appear to demonstrate positive transfer of CMC discourse to FTF oral proficiency. One might speculate that this positive transfer relates to how college students today are comfortable with the different modes of CMC and how they transition with great versatility from one mode to the other.

Negotiation of meaning From an interactionist approach, language development can be studied by examining how a learner makes use of the L2 in interaction with other people. From a sociocultural viewpoint, preserving the integrity of environments and the people and interactions embedded in them is also critical. One challenge in instructed L2 environments is to identify tasks and situations that facilitate interaction and negotiation for meaning. To this end, there is extensive literature on FTF learner interaction and a growing body of studies on negotiation for meaning in CMC (see Smith 2003, for a summary of previous work).

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In FTF oral interaction in FL classes, learners are often presented with situations or problems to solve, with the underlying premise that the process of negotiating for meaning facilitates L2 acquisition. In a number of studies on the discourse used in CMC environments, learners have been shown to use similar tactics in negotiating for meaning online (e.g., Smith 2003). A study by Blake (2000) found that pairs of L2 Spanish (NNS-NNS) learners performing jigsaw and information-gap tasks online negotiated with each other often about lexical confusions but not as frequently about syntactic issues. Blake suggested that SCMC can be used as a medium for tasks that elicit negotiation of meaning, as such tasks seem to affect L2 learners’ output and furthermore provide a window on their interlanguage. Consistent findings were reported in a study by Blake and Zyzik (2003), in which similar tasks were used but each pair of learners consisted of one heritage speaker of Spanish (NS) and one learner of Spanish (NNS). Tudini (2003) studied intermediate learners of Italian (NNSs) chatting in dyads with Italian NSs. Her chat logs indicated that learners negotiate for meaning and modify their interlanguage when engaged in open-ended conversational tasks with unfamiliar interlocutors, with both lexical and structural difficulties triggering most negotiations. Although Smith (2003) found that, in broad terms, the negotiation patterns in online synchronous chat conversations of NNS dyads were similar to those observed in FTF communication and fit loosely into the Varonis and Gass (1985) model, he suggested expanding the model for CMC environments to allow for delays in responses to the so-called “triggers” in the Varonis and Gass model. This is due largely to the lack of strict turn adjacency in CMC compared to that found in FTF communication. Complementary to the above studies of synchronous CMC, Kitade (2006) investigated the negotiation model in asynchronous CMC. Utterances in ACMC have generally been found to be more accurate, complex, formal and longer than those in SCMC. Her study examined task-based email interactions among NSNNS dyads with respect to the negotiation structure and strategies used, revealing distinctive features of ACMC in the data. Although the time interval between the email messages allowed participants sufficient time to comprehend, plan, and produce messages, the pressure to reply to signals was also reduced, and the participants thus easily ignored or forgot them. Therefore, in order to get their partner’s attention, participants used more complicated, formal and explicit signals as compared to those observed in SCMC. The combination of asynchrony and text-based characteristics permitted participants to provide salient and beneficial triggers, signals, and responses. NS responses to NNS triggers were found to provide very high-quality input to learners (e.g., rephrasing, explanations, and examples of usage).



Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments

In addition to synchronous text chats and asynchronous emails, a third type of CMC described in the literature is the MOO environment, which involves userextendable replicas of virtual worlds. Users can set up personal profiles of their online persona, create and manipulate objects, and save them in the MOO database. When users sign on to a MOO, they are dropped into a text-based virtual reality, which is divided into many rooms or locales. Kötter (2003) investigated synchronous tandem learning in a MOO environment. Tandem learners are pairs of learners whose target language is their partner’s respective native language. Although early tandem learning involved exchanging emails, Kötter studied tandem learners interacting in a synchronous MOO and found that online tandems can work even though the learners have to respond more quickly to each other in real time than if they had communicated via asynchronous email. In particular, he investigated the learners’ engagement in negotiation of meaning and found that the ratio of clarification requests to the overall number of turns in the tandem data was much higher than the aggregate of all the repair work that Pica and Doughty’s (1985) learners engaged in during their FTF encounters. In a related study, O’Rourke (2005) also examined whether an online, textbased MOO used in the tandem framework had effects on the negotiation of meaning. He suggested that the single most important factor in whether the negotiation patterns exhibited a metalinguistic focus was the absence of nonlinguistic cues. Specifically, he noted that the taxonomies of signal and response types for FTF interaction cannot be applied unmodified to negotiation in the MOO. For example, Varonis and Gass’s (1985) nonverbal category is irrelevant, as MOO users do not employ “silence” (nonresponse) as a nonunderstanding signal, and there are no other available nonverbal channels. The burden of feedback thus falls squarely on language, although typographical means are occasionally used as a supplement or even as a substitute. In an earlier study, O’Rourke (2002) had observed that interlocutors did not show any tendency to focus on formal aspects of problematic utterances in resolving communication difficulties, and reiterated in his later article (Rourke 2005) that they “remain focused on global meaning (semantic or pragmatic), and in cases in which they are specific, it is mostly in relation to words, as has been found repeatedly in negotiation research” (p. 458). Studies of synchronous videoconferencing have begun to emerge. For example, Wang (2006) found that learners’ focus on form in videoconferencing tasks was beneficial to the negotiation of meaning in task completion. In summary, on the whole, L2 learners tend to negotiate meaning extensively and reasonably successfully in their discourse when problems in communication occur during task-based CMC. But it may well be necessary to modify the traditional FTF model to accommodate the different parameters of online CMC environments.

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Pragmatic competence With regard to the development of pragmatic competence in instructed online environments, the focus is on the knowledge that allows L2 learners to use appropriate utterances or speech acts in particular contexts and to manage conversations or other discourse situations. In an early study of synchronous CMC within a NNS class of German learners, Chun (1994) found that networked class discussions allowed students to generate and initiate more types of speech acts than they typically would in FTF oral conversations. They asked more questions of other students as well as of the teacher; and they gave feedback to others and requested clarification when they had not understood someone else. Students also played a greater role in managing the discourse, for example, they felt greater freedom to suggest a new topic, follow up on someone else’s idea, or request more information. In general, they took the initiative more than they do in the normal classroom, due to the more decentralized role of the instructor. Later studies with English as a Second Language (ESL) and FL classes have obtained similar results. Sotillo (2000) investigated discourse functions in learner output obtained via SCMC and ACMC in two advanced ESL writing classes. Her results showed that the quantity and types of discourse functions present in SCMC were similar to the types of interactional modifications found in FTF conversations deemed necessary for SLA. Discourse functions in asynchronous discussions were more constrained than those found in synchronous discussions and similar to the question-response-evaluation sequence of the traditional language classroom. Positive results were presented by Fitze (2006), who found that in electronic conferences within his advanced ESL class, students produced more discourse demonstrating interactive competence than in FTF conferences, or in other words, more control of the discussion. In a study comparing German learners’ output in pencil-and-paper group journals with their production in SCMC, Abrams (2001) found that learners not only adopted a larger variety of participant roles during CMC than in group journals (e.g., they challenged, supported, and joked with their interlocutors), but these roles were also more interactively negotiated in the CMC environment than in the pencil-and-paper journals. In a systematic comparison of the effects of three types of synchronous group discussion (written chat, oral chat, and FTF discussion) on the acquisition of the speech act of refusing an invitation, Sykes (2005) found that the discussion type had an effect on the pragmatic development of students in two classes of thirdsemester Spanish. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the role play data in all three discussion types revealed that the students in all three discussion groups improved their pragmatic competence in some way. The written chat group outperformed the others in terms of both complexity and variety of strategies used,



Computer-mediated discourse in instructed environments

ostensibly because without the tools that oral communication often provides (e.g., intonation, body language, etc.), the written chat group had to be more explicit in their communication. She concluded that overall, SCMC is a valuable tool for pragmatic instruction, but suggested that written chat should be the principal means of electronic SCMC discussion due to the complexity and variety of the achieved results. She based her recommendations on previous research (Abrams 2001; Beauvois 1997; Payne & Whitney 2002; Smith 2003), which had also found that written chat contains characteristics of both oral and written communication but at the same time allows learners more time for production and negotiation of meaning. In contrast to the immediately preceding studies, which involved intact classes of L2 learners (only NNSs), other studies have investigated NS-NNS interactions. Because pragmatic competence might be better developed by opportunities to interact with a variety of interlocutors – in particular NSs of the target language, from whom learners are able to observe appropriate linguistic choices or pragmatic options and receive assistance – instructors and researchers have arranged online exchanges and collaborations for their L2 learners with NSs. For example, Belz and Kinginger (2002, 2003) reported on extensive telecollaborations between (a) students in Germany who were preparing to be English teachers and students in the United States who were in fourth-semester German classes and (b) students in an English language class at a graduate school of telecommunications in France and students in the United States who were in fourth-semester French classes. In telecollaborative partnerships, “internationally-dispersed learners in parallel language classes use Internet communication tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, threaded discussion, and MOOs ... in order to support social interaction, dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange” (Belz 2003a: 2). Their data demonstrated the development of pragmatic competence in the use of the formal versus the informal variety of the word you in German and French, and they suggested that the emergence of pronoun use is tied to the expression of solidarity among student peers. A key conclusion was that it is the participation in relevant social interaction, where issues of personal identity are at stake, that plays an important role in language socialization and may be more helpful for developing pragmatic competence than rule-based language acquisition. Thorne (2003) described a case in which a U.S. student studying French and an engineering student in France went beyond the pedagogical goals and developed a personal, more intimate relationship via instant messaging (IM). There were intense periods of communicative activity, and based on many hours of transcripts, he noted definitive foreign language development in the areas of syntax and pragmatics. Other advantages of interaction and collaboration with native speaking partners are that learners may choose to observe conversations or to participate in

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them. They also have access to a broader range of authentic discourse options with members of the second language speech community (Belz & Kinginger 2003). Thus, based on the studies to date, it appears that CMC can be helpful in developing a certain measure of L2 pragmatic competence. However, as will be discussed in the next section, intercultural exchanges have brought to light some of the challenges that are presented when speakers with different pragmatic systems attempt online discussion and collaboration.

Intercultural competence At first glance, it would seem that online distance exchanges and collaborations between learners of different cultures would be ideal for enhancing intercultural competence, as they provide “convenient, authentic, direct, and speedy access to native speakers and their cultures” (Kramsch & Thorne 2002: 100). Indeed, particularly since the start of the new millennium, numerous projects have been implemented and a rapidly growing body of research studies is emerging (see Belz & Thorne 2006, and the overview by Lomicka 2006). In this chapter, the results of selected studies on intercultural communication will be summarized (see Table 3 below). Although it is convenient to divide studies into two categories, asynchronous CMC and synchronous CMC, a number of articles examined both types of CMC (e.g., Chun & Wade 2004; Kramsch & Thorne 2002; Thorne 2003). The majority of recent research and pedagogical implementation has focused on intercultural communication, which typically involves asynchronous CMC (email exchanges or forum discussions) or synchronous CMC (chat, MOOs) between NNSs and NSs. However, some attention is being paid to intracultural CMC in the L2 classroom as well. (For a summary of previous work on intracultural CMC and a detailed discussion of directions for future research as well as the pedagogical considerations of designing tasks and assignments, evaluating student performance, and what the role of the instructor should be, see Abrams 2006). Some projects involved both intracultural and intercultural CMC (e.g., Kramsch & Thorne 2002). Although it might be assumed that intercultural learning is an automatic benefit of email exchanges between learners in different countries, (e.g., NNSs learning an L2 through emailing NSs in the target country), varying results have been reported. To some extent, learners have been able to develop some elements of Byram’s (1997) intercultural communicative competence (e.g., Liaw & Johnson 2001; Müller-Hartmann 2000; O’Dowd 2003), but even within a partly successful exchange, problems have arisen. For example, Liaw and Johnson (2001) found that with EFL students in Taiwan and pre-service bilingual/ESL teachers in the

Text-based chat/MOO

Instant messaging Sotillo 2005; Thorne 2003

Sotillo 2005

Forums/bulletin boards

Belz 2003; Hanna &  de Nooy 2003; Reeder et al. 2004

Chun & Wade 2004;  Furstenberg et al. 2001; Wade 2005; Ware 2005; Ware & Kramsch 2005

Email Intragroup (NNSs only) Abrams 2006; Kramsch & Thorne 2002; Liaw &  Johnson 2001;  Müller-Hartmann 2003; O’Dowd 2003 Intercultural NNSs-NSs Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003; Belz & Kinginger 2003; Chun & Wade 2004; Itakura 2004; Kramsch & Thorne 2002; Thorne 2003 Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003; Belz & Kinginger 2003; Kramsch & Thorne 2002; Lee 2006; O’Dowd & Eberbach 2004; O’Rourke 2005; Schneider & von der Emde 2006; Thorne 2003

Abrams 2006; Kramsch et al. 2000; Schneider &  von der Emde 2006

Synchronous

CMC

Asynchronous

Table 3.  Intercultural Exchanges and CMC

Jepson 2005; Kinginger 1998; Lomicka 2006; O’Dowd 2006

Blake 2005; Hampel & Hauck 2004

Audio-/Videoconferencing

CMC

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United States, “curiosity toward the other culture was a motivating factor for ongoing correspondence, but cultural presumptions were sometimes a hindrance for communication; positive interpretations of cultural differences and empathy were key factors contributing to the removal of communication obstacles” (p. 235). Müller-Hartman (2000) found in three email projects between EFL high school classes in Germany and English and Social Studies classes in the United States and Canada that tasks, setting, the ability of the teacher to discover issues of intercultural learning within the learners’ entries and to then engage students in effective classroom activities, and the ability of the learners to develop their own questions and comments all contributed to intercultural learning processes. O’Dowd (2003) reported on a year-long email exchange between Spanish and English second-year university language learners. Examples from five different partnerships generally confirmed the value of CMC interactions for the development of different components of Byram’s (1997) intercultural communicative competence (ICC), though to what extent the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of ICC were developed and whether or how the students would later put them to use could not be determined. Some students simply confirmed their negative attitudes towards the target culture, while others moved on from the stereotypes and prejudices they had held at the outset of the exchange. The more “successful” learners had opportunities to express their feelings and views about their own culture to a receptive audience; they were encouraged to reflect critically on their own culture through questions posed by their partners; they engaged in dialogic interaction with their partners about the home and target cultures and this consequently led to a growing awareness of different perspectives on the two cultures’ products and practices (p. 137). Kramsch and Thorne (2002) reported on an asynchronous CMC email exchange between a second-year French class in the United States and French lycée (high school) students (NNSs and NSs), in which the French and American students discussed a variety of topics during the semester. Examples are provided of problematic scenarios that are “characterized by different discourse styles that play themselves out on the national, institutional, and personal levels” (p. 96), because “neither the French nor the American students were aware that the global medium only exacerbated the discrepancies in social and cultural genres of communication” (p. 100). An important recommendation for such exchanges is that it is imperative for learners to understand the differences in these genres in order to understand each other’s lives and reconfigure understanding of their own lives. In addition, choosing an appropriate medium for communication is important: Thorne (2003) reported on a case study that found email an awkward medium for mediating peer interaction among college students.



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Itakura (2004) explored how cultural stereotypes are formed, modified, dismissed or reinforced based on a collaborative intercultural email project between Hong Kong university learners of Japanese and Japanese university students. Her data suggested that the email exchanges with a NS of the target language enabled the learners to modify existing stereotypes that had been formed on the basis of sources such as the media and hearsay from their fellow learners and, in becoming more aware of the limitations and problems of cultural stereotypes, to negotiate the validity of their previous assumptions. But some negative aspects were also revealed, namely that the learners were found to be greatly influenced by remarks made by NSs to the extent that they sometimes formed new stereotypes. Chun and Wade (2004) reported on an intercultural exchange that involved both email and forum discussions, based on the Cultura project, which was developed at MIT and described in Furstenberg, Levet, English, and Maillet (2001) and on the work of Kramsch (1993, 1998), who argued that cultural meaning is created through the actions and interactions of speakers – in this case writers – in social contexts, and that language and culture are inseparable. In general, Chun and Wade found that learners were able to construct new intercultural knowledge from reading entries made by both German and American students, from writing entries to the forums (threaded discussions), and in particular, from participating in the email exchanges. However, their generally positive results were tempered by the fact that it was not always entirely clear that learners noticed or were aware of cultural differences and were able to link their existing knowledge with new knowledge. In the forum entries, for example, learners made a number of erroneous generalizations and statements that contradicted what was actually stated in the online questionnaires that both sides had filled out at the start of the exchange. An interesting finding by Chun and Wade was that in the email exchanges, learners were more inclined to ask questions, request clarification, negotiate the meaning of words, concepts, and practices, and make observations and hypotheses than in the forum discussions. Not only did they ask more questions of their email partners than in the forum entries, and seemed to be culturally curious and motivated to understand their own as well as the other culture, but they also engaged in more direct forms of address and dialogue as well as rapport management. They went beyond general observations and comments prevalent in the forum entries (e.g., “the Germans,” “the Americans,” “most people”) to the personal realm, using more speech acts in the process. In contrast to the findings of Furstenberg et al. (2001) that forums went “much deeper than traditional e-mail student exchanges” (p. 73), the students in Chun and Wade’s study conducted deeper discussions in their email exchanges than in the more public forums. With regard to whether the online exchange fostered understanding a foreign culture by putting that culture in relation with one’s own, it appeared that the

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project did establish what Kramsch (1993) has called a “sphere of interculturality,” that the students did, to varying degrees, reflect on and modify their stereotypical ideas or preconceived notions about their own and the other culture (p. 205). However, there was also evidence that certain cultural preconceptions and misconceptions appeared to be difficult to change and tended to prevail, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary. Other studies of online forums found similar successes and failures. For example, Hanna and de Nooy (2003) reported on a case study that examined threads written by four Anglophone students of French when they posted messages to a forum on the web site of a French newspaper. Students who were able to conform to the norms and conventions of French online discussion felt successful, whereas learners who did not have strategies to write and analyze “appropriately” interpreted their lack of success as personal rebuff. Ware and Kramsch (2005) discussed an extended episode of misunderstanding that occurred during an asynchronous telecollaborative project between two learners in the United States and Germany and suggested that teachers are pivotal in helping learners take an intercultural stance. In terms of assessing intercultural competence, Shelley and Baumann (2005) suggested that mere exposure to language and cultural information is not sufficient for inducing attitudinal change and that “further work needs to be undertaken to develop more accurate ways of measuring the gain of intercultural competence” (p. 137). Studies of intercultural communication using synchronous CMC include Kinginger (1998), who studied two-way simultaneous videoconferencing, Thorne (2003) whose learners communicated via instant messaging, and Kramsch, A’Ness, and Lam (2000), who reported on the use of Internet relay chat. In one of the first studies of videoconferencing in FL teaching, Kinginger (1998) analyzed the exchange between English-speaking and French-speaking students in videoconferences, in which the interaction was structured based on a set of prepared questions. The first half-hour of the exchange took place in French and the second in English. In an analysis of the French portion of the videoconference, Kinginger found that the American students were unsuccessful in profiting from the interaction due to heightened anxiety and a mismatch between various features of the standard written-based variety of French taught in the class and the spoken variety of French used by the NSs. Kramsch et al. (2000) reported on a case study of the use of Internet relay chat by a Chinese high school learner of English. They suggested that CMC can empower L2 learners to express themselves and reflect on their identities, in that “Internet relay chat offers its users the opportunity to develop several identities that might seem to be at odds with one another, ... but, in the virtual world of the Internet, these identities can be articulated in a coherent multimedia narrative



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(p. 98). They concluded that “multimedia and the Internet enable learners to find a voice for themselves at the intersection of multiple time scales, to represent their own version of reality through multimodal texts, and to confront a broad public audience with that reality” (p. 98). In sum, this section has described some of the successes and failures of online intercultural exchanges. In the next section, I will examine the challenges we face for the different areas of L2 and second culture (C2) acquisition.

Challenges The combined wisdom of the many studies discussed above suggests that although online CMC can provide unprecedented opportunities for quick, extensive, and reasonably authentic exchanges and collaborations between learners in different countries and cultures, there are a number of inherent challenges that can be obstacles to successful L2 learning, and particularly to successful C2 or intercultural learning (see O’Dowd & Ritter 2006, who developed a structured inventory of factors, suggesting 20 different factors at four different levels: individual, classroom, socioinstitutional, and interaction). Challenges that I view as particularly salient include the following: 1. From a theoretical standpoint, there is a lack of appropriate theoretical frameworks for using CMC in FL learning. For example, when applying the interactionist approach to SLA or the negotiation of meaning construct to study CMC, revised or expanded models are necessary to accommodate the entirely different modes (online written conversation, FTF oral conversation, virtual conversation via videoconference). In problematizing the notion of culture, “a less essentialist and more dynamic, discourse-based understanding of culture is needed” (Reeder, Macfadyen, Roche, & Chase 2004: 100). 2. In terms of improving linguistic competence, it cannot be assumed that learners automatically will notice their errors or that their NS partners will always correct them. It is often difficult to get learners to focus on form in quasi-authentic conversational situations. 3. Although studies have shown that CMC can contribute to improving oral proficiency, continued effort is necessary to demonstrate actual causality of transfer of written online discourse to spoken FTF discourse. 4. In dealing with pragmatic competence, it is essential to raise the awareness of learners with regard to the different communication norms, conventions, and genres, so that misunderstandings can be kept to a minimum.

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5. For intercultural exchanges, there are a number of extralinguistic, social, cultural and institutional factors that must be dealt with beforehand in order to ensure successful collaborations, for example, finding appropriate and compatible partner classes and colleagues to work with; finding sufficient overlap in the calendars/schedules of the two institutions (see Belz 2001; Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003); and, dealing with differences in expectations and norms for the project, such as, how seriously an exchange is taken, whether it is just an assignment, or whether it becomes a personal or intimate friendship (Thorne 2003; Ware 2005). 6. In general, individual differences must be taken into account, for example, the affective aspects of learning and learners (including motivation, attitudes, the maturity of the learners) and, quite importantly, the differences in linguistic proficiency of both learners. In his study of tandem learning, for example, O’Rourke (2005) stated, “When we consider the effect on negotiation behavior of the tandem framework, it is evident that the proficiency imbalance and the consequent lingua franca status of English has a substantial impact ... . German students presumably benefit from the sheer volume of L2 input and output but also from the increased metalinguistic focus I believe arises from modified input and pushed output; Irish students correspondingly lose out in all of these areas. If their L1 is seen as the preferred and most effective solution to most communication problems, we can scarcely expect increased focus on target language form” (p. 458). The conclusions drawn in most of these studies point repeatedly to the role of the instructor in raising awareness, in designing appropriate tasks, in monitoring the collaborations, and in following up on these exchanges, either online or in the classroom (e.g., Chun & Wade 2004; Hampel 2006; Hauck & Hampel 2005; O’Rourke & Schwienhorst 2003). This, then, is the challenge for FL teachers for mediating discourse in instructed online environments: not only must the assignments we give our students be well-conceived and based on underlying SLA principles, but we must never assume that simply providing opportunities for intercultural communication will unproblematically afford target language interaction or will automatically result in the development of linguistic or cultural competence. In order for linguistic and pragmatic competence to be enhanced, it is not sufficient only to offer extensive input without some degree of attention to form and opportunities to use these forms appropriately in actual communicative contexts. Lee (2006) maintains “When communicative and problem-solving activities are carefully orchestrated, corrective feedback is readily available to learners” (p. 490), but how and whether this feedback becomes uptake needs further study. According to O’Dowd and Eberbach (2004), teachers must first develop students’



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understanding of intercultural learning, help learners improve their ability to make effective contributions to the online interaction, increase their awareness of the difference between online monologues and dialogues, and finally, establish a good working relationship with the partner teacher. In order to modify, not even to speak of eliminating, stereotypes or preconceived notions of the other culture, it is imperative to view acquiring intercultural communicative competence as an ongoing, co-constructed process. As an example of following up in the classroom on an online intercultural exchange, let us revisit a study by Chun and Wade (2004), discussed in the preceding section. After observing the shortcomings in a two-year online intercultural exchange between students of German in the United States and partner classes of students in a German university as reported in Chun and Wade (2004), we followed up in our German classes by having students present oral reports about their online forum discussions. The classroom discussions that ensued were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The analysis of 11 forum group discussions, averaging 2,000–4,000 words per group, was reported in Wade (2005). She found that although learners displayed Byram’s (1997) attitudes of curiosity and interest, the classroom data showed mixed results in displaying attitudes of openness and critical reflection on C1 and C2. Furthermore, in the classroom discussions, some of the American students noted that the Germans did not seem to be interested in the Americans because they purportedly did not ask many questions in their forum entries. This observation led to a third phase in our data analysis, namely to examine cross cultural pragmatics. Scholars of cross cultural pragmatics posit that speakers interact according to their own pragmatic norms, which can result in a clash of expectations and misperceptions about the other group (Boxer 2002). Scholars of interlanguage pragmatics suggest that it is the task of the L2 learner to acquire the C2 norms (Kasper & Rose 1999). We therefore are currently examining pragmatic features in the forum discourse data to try and see what might have caused our students’ complaints. Specifically, we are looking at how students express interest in and curiosity about the other culture (C2), in both the L1 and L2 entries. Preliminary results show that in some forum groups, interest was expressed in similar ways (a) in both L1 and L2 and (b) about both “controversial” and “non-controversial” topics. In other groups, some differences can be found. For example, when reflecting on C1 and C2 (and when voicing criticism), some American students used direct and indirect questions and hedges, such as “I’m not exactly sure ...” and “Possibly one answer might be ... .” However some German students used statements and formulaic expressions to communicate their thoughts on C1 and C2 as facts or general truths, for example, “For me it

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was clear that ...” and “This is in no way expressed in the Americans’ narratives ... .” This attention to the pragmatics of online discourse is the focus of other researchers and practitioners as well. Schneider and von der Emde (2006) discussed the issue of conflict emerging within intercultural partnerships during synchronous interactions using a German-English MOO. They suggested a shift away from the term communication and toward the Bakhtinian conception of dialogue, which characterizes language not as a unified system for maintaining status quo semantics, but rather as a site of struggle. Their approach includes having students read research on intercultural FL education in addition to participating in dialogue with speakers in another culture. As Belz (2003b) stated, “the importance (but not necessarily the prominence) of the teacher ... increases rather than diminishes in Internet-mediated intercultural FL education precisely because of the electronic nature of the discourse. In contrast to conventional FTF classroom-based learning, the teacher in telecollaboration must be educated to discern, identify, explain, and model culturally-contingent patterns of interaction in the absence of paralinguistic meaning signals” (p. 92). In the next and final section, I look toward the future of CMC and intercultural collaborations, noting that emerging technologies such as videoconferencing may restore some of the paralinguistic signals that are missing in text-based CMC. Whether this medium has positive or negative results for L2 and C2 learning remains to be seen.

Directions for the future The phrase Web 2.0 was coined, according to Wikipedia, by O’Reilly Media in 2004 to refer to a supposed “second generation of web-based communities and hosted services” that let people collaborate and share information online in perceived new ways, such as social networking sites, wikis, and other communication tools (“Web 2.0,” 2007, §1). For the purposes of concluding this chapter, I find one of these characteristics listed in the NetLingo dictionary particularly appropriate, namely that Web 2.0 emphasizes “user-generated content, ... looking for ways to get users involved and feeling like co-developers in what is known as the “architecture of participation” (“Web 2.0,” 2007, §1). For example, Wikipedia is seven times larger than Encyclopedia Britannica, available in 92 languages and is written by readers. I would like to conclude this chapter by suggesting that both the advent of the second-generation Web, combined with the focus in the profession on communication and cultures (see Byrnes 2002; National Standards 1999;



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Schulz, Lalande, Dykstra-Pruim, Zimmer-Loew, & James 2005), propel us in the direction of using CMC for intercultural collaborations, fraught as they may be with obstacles. To echo Kern, Warschauer, and Ware (2004), I believe that key issues to continue to study include: (a) the fact that connectivity does not necessarily translate into successful intercultural learning or understanding; (b) the notion that learners can try to retain their “natural” discourse style, but both sides need to become more aware of their own and the other culture’s dominant patterns (based on the work of Belz 2003b); and (c) whether the initial assumption that the type of communication that students engage in during CMC naturally supports the development of intercultural understanding (Kramsch & Thorne 2002). It appears not to be a matter of linguistic misunderstandings, but rather a clash in cultural frames and discourse systems that can lead to unsuccessful intercultural understanding. In other words, Kern et al. (2004) stated that research thus far has indicated that “there is no single effect of using online communication, but rather that processes and results vary widely depending on a range of logistical, pedagogical, and social factors” (p. 243). Thorne’s (2006) argument for a shift from communicative competence to intercultural competence also resonates with my views of the future of Internet-mediated intercultural FL education. Collaborative exchanges provide opportunities for L2 learners to read and produce extended discourse with the goal of enhancing linguistic knowledge and cultural understanding. In terms of new technologies, emerging asynchronous tools include blogs and wikis (see Ducate & Lomicka 2005; Godwin-Jones 2003), while synchronous tools include electronic conversation partners called chatbots (or chatterbots) that rely on artificial intelligence to understand human language and to generate logically consistent and realistic responses (see Fryer & Carpenter 2006), audioconferencing (see Blake 2005; Hampel & Hauck 2004; Jepson 2005; Lomicka 2006), and videoconferencing (e.g., Lafford & Lafford 2005; O’Dowd 2006; Wang 2007). The study by O’Dowd (2006) is one of the few studies to date which examines the influence of both text and image-based Internet communication tools. He provides valuable information on the pedagogy of intercultural videoconferencing, and the profession awaits research on the impact of this new medium in SLA. It will be interesting to see whether videoconferencing can restore prosodic and paralinguistic features such as gestural information, dynamic real-time repair mechanisms, and other elements found normally in FTF conversation, and more importantly, whether L2 and C2 learning will benefit from this new type of online discourse. In the meantime, I fully endorse Belz and Thorne’s (2006) call to consider seriously “blended instruction” in intercultural FL education, which involves technologymediated and (gasp!) traditional forms of instruction such as FTF instruction.

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Tudini, V. (2003). Using native speakers in chat. Language Learning & Technology, 7(3), 141– 159. Tudini, V. (2005). Chatlines for beginners: Negotiating conversation at a distance. In B. Holmberg, M. Shelley, & C. White (Eds.), Distance education and languages (pp. 212–229). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Varonis, E. M. & Gass, S. M. (1985). Non-native/non-native conversations: A model for negotiation and meaning. Applied Linguistics, 6, 71–90. Vetter, A. & Chanier, T. (2006). Supporting oral production for professional purposes in synchronous communication with heterogeneous learners. ReCALL, 18(1), 5–23. Wade, E. R. (2005). Enhancing German language learners’ intercultural communicative competence through the on-line exchange project ICE. PhD dissertation. University of California, Santa Barbara. Wang, Y. (2004). Supporting synchronous distance language learning with desktop videoconferencing. Language Learning & Technology, 8(3), 90–121. Wang, Y. (2006). Negotiation of meaning in desktop videoconferencing-supported distance language learning. ReCALL, 18(1), 122–146. Wang, Y. (2007). Task design in videoconferencing-supported distance language learning. CALICO Journal, 24(3), 591–630. Ware, P. (2005). “Missed” communication in online communication: Tensions in a GermanAmerican telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2), 64–89. Ware, P. & Kramsch, C. (2005). Toward an intercultural stance: Teaching German and English through telecollaboration. Modern Language Journal, 89(2), 190–205. Warschauer, M. (1996). Comparing face-to-face and electronic discussion in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal, 13(2), 7–26. Warschauer, M. (1997). Computer-mediated collaborative learning: Theory and practice. Modern Language Journal, 81(4), 470–481. Weininger, M. J. & Shield, L. (2004). Promoting oral production in a written channel: An investigation of learner language in MOO. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 16(4), 329–349.

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Research perspectives on online discourse and foreign language learning Carl S. Blyth

University of Texas at Austin

In order to understand changing research approaches to online discourse in the field of foreign language learning, this essay examines the most common metaphors used to conceptualize and to guide CALL and CMC research. Next, a taxonomy of research approaches is sketched in an effort to catalog the constitutive parts of research studies (e.g., theoretical framework, methodology, focus of research, locus of research, etc.). It is argued that most CMC research belongs to one of four fairly distinct approaches to language learning research (technological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and ecological). The technological approach is comprised of descriptive, largely atheoretical studies that examine a new technology’s application to traditional classroom practices. Studies belonging to the psycholinguistic approach are typically framed in terms of the interaction hypothesis and the noticing hypothesis. The sociocultural approach is characterized by the Vygotskyan notions of the mediated mind and social learning. And finally, the ecological approach shifts the goal of research to the discovery of how the constituent parts of a learning environment (students, teachers, classroom, school, computers, etc.) form a whole. Each research approach is analyzed more closely by examining studies that represent prototypical exemplars of the particular approach. Although the four approaches are historically situated – first technological, next psycholinguistic, then sociocultural, and finally ecological – all four continue to be relevant and productive. The evolution of the four research approaches indicates a growing interest in the social context of foreign language learning.

In his wide-reaching book on language and the Internet published in 2001, wellknown linguist David Crystal claims that Netspeak, his neologism for online discourse, is something completely new and different. Crystal admits at various times in his book that conducting research on the linguistic consequences of the Internet is a daunting challenge due to the size and dynamism of the Internet. He takes pains to warn the reader that his efforts must be understood as exploratory,

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programmatic, and suggestive of further research and reflection. Despite these careful warnings, Crystal (2001) discusses the impact of the Internet on human communication in hyperbolic terms rarely found in academic prose: The phenomenon of Netspeak is going to ‘change the way we think’ about language in a fundamental way, because it is a linguistic singularity – a genuine new medium…. It is something fundamentally different from both writing and speech, as traditionally understood. It is, in short, a fourth medium … Netspeak is a development of millennial significance. A new medium of linguistic communication does not arrive very often, in the history of the race.  (pp. 238–239) … the sheer scale of the present Internet, let alone its future telecosmic incarnations, has convinced me that we are on the brink of the biggest language revolution ever. Whereas in the past we have had speech, then writing, and throughout the 20th century debated the relationship between the two, now we are faced with a new medium, and one which could be bigger than either of its predecessors. What I have been calling Netspeak will become part of a much larger computer-mediated language, which in the digitally designed enhanced-bandwidth environment of the future could be the community’s linguistic norm. Whereas, at the moment, face-to-face communication ranks as primary, in any account of the linguistic potentialities of humankind, in the future it may not be so. (p. 241)

Crystal’s cautionary tone is well taken – any attempt to describe the impact of the Internet on the trajectories of human language(s) or even on the future of foreign language acquisition research is fraught with problems. The subject is simply too big and too dynamic. As a consequence, the goal for this essay is purposely circumscribed, that is, to describe and classify the literature on online discourse and foreign language learning in order to uncover the most salient research trends. In other words, this essay attempts to describe where research on foreign language learning and online discourse has been and where it may be headed in the near future. How have applied linguists attempted to explore the potentialities of online discourse? What methodologies have they employed? What theoretical frameworks have they adopted? What research foci have they chosen? This essay builds upon three recent overviews of CALL and CMC research (Egbert & Petrie 2005; Kern 2006; Kern, Ware, & Warschauer 2004). It seems that the time is right for such overviews given that “research on online language learning is now entering its second decade” (Kern, Ware, & Warschauer 2004: 243). And yet, as Crystal cautions, it is impossible to produce a definitive summation of the state-of-affairs regarding the impact of the Internet given its rapid growth. In fact, as Crystal himself acknowledges, it is almost a convention for scholarship on the Internet to contain a disclaimer that much information will likely be outdated by the time of publication.



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In order to understand changing research approaches to online discourse, this essay’s point of departure will be a brief overview of the most common metaphors used to conceptualize and to guide CALL and CMC research. Next, a taxonomy of research approaches will be sketched. The goal of this section is to catalog the constitutive parts of research studies (e.g., theoretical framework, methodology, focus of research, locus of research, etc.) in order to develop four overlapping yet fairly distinct research agendas (technological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and ecological). Each research approach will then be analyzed more closely by examining studies that represent prototypical exemplars of the particular approach. Finally, lines of future research will be discussed in light of recent technological and educational developments.

Guiding metaphors In her brief essay on CALL research perspectives, Petrie (2005) suggested the metaphor of cartography to describe attempts to chart the boundaries and relationships between different CALL researchers and practioners. In keeping with Petrie’s metaphor, this section presents a map of the field by describing the dominant metaphors invoked by CALL/CMC research. Meskill (2005) claimed that metaphors naturally have a place of privilege in any research agenda because metaphorical thinking is generally called upon to make sense of new phenomena. She described seven metaphors commonly used by applied linguists when thinking about CALL and CMC: the conduit, the berry-bush, the magister, the pedagogue, the environment/world, the tool, and the community. The conduit metaphor, perhaps the oldest and most influential metaphor in education, describes learning as the passage of knowledge from one container to another, from the teacher’s mind to the learner’s mind. This metaphor is operant whenever educators use terms such as instructional delivery, exposure, and transmission. According to Meskill (2005), in much of the CALL research of the mid 1980s, the computer was viewed as the repository of information and the computer-controlled activities or tutorial programs were seen as the conduit. A variant of the conduit metaphor, the berry-bush, was invoked to conceptualize student-controlled computer-assisted activities. Students working in a berry-bush environment could choose their own paths rather than proceed along a prescribed path as was common in most early computer tutorials. Such a program was conceived of as a bush with berries (content, information) hanging from different branches (paths through the computer program) that students could pick (choose) according to their own preferences.

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Another early metaphor for conceptualizing CALL was the intelligent tutor. According to Meskill, citing Higgins (1988), there were two prevalent variants of the tutor metaphor: the magister and the pedagogue. The magister, as the name implies, is an educational authority in total control of all aspects of learning. The magister chooses what is taught and how it is to be taught. The magister leads; his students dutifully follow. While the pedagogue is a teacher too, he is not in the lead. In fact, according to Higgins the word pedagogue originally meant “the slave who escorts the children to school” (as cited in Meskill 2005: 14). Thus, the pedagogue walks several paces behind his young master who calls upon his knowledgeable slave to supply him with the correct information according to his whim. Meskill (2005) demonstrated that the magister metaphor underlies the design of integrated learning systems (ILSs) in which “learners drill and practice with programmed instruction” (p. 30). Furthermore, Meskill claimed that such a metaphor of the all-knowing, infinitely patient educator dispensing information and evaluating performance in an ongoing effort to achieve quantifiable results largely shaped “experimental research questions of the ‘if treatment X, then learning outcome Y’ sort” (p. 30). The pedagogue metaphor better reflects how contemporary learners use the Internet whenever they need to find information (e.g., conducting keyword searches, posting queries on bulletin boards, participating in a chat room or online forum). Meskill (2005) argued that research informed by the pedagogue metaphor tends to be more qualitative: “It is also the case that contemporary research that examines pedagogue applications of CALL by definition is conducted in less systematized, more messy venues where, rather than simple objective scores, evidence of learning is constituted by recorded language used by students when undertaking tasks .... Studies using this less-tidy approach yield less quantifiable but richer results” (p. 31). Meskill cited Papert (1980) as the first to coin the phrase microworld to refer to a virtual space that simulated real life to some degree and where computer users could interact with features of the environment to affect desired outcomes. One of the first and best-known microworlds was called Logo, a program designed by Papert to teach small children about geometry. In the Logo microworld, children would write simple computer commands that caused an onscreen turtle to draw geometric shapes. As a consequence of playing with the turtle, children made their own discoveries about various principles underlying geometry. This concept of discovery learning in a computer simulation came to be known as a microworld following Papert’s ground-breaking software. The microworld concept was later extended to foreign language materials, most notably the Spanish interactive videodisc Montevidisco (Bush & Larson 1983) and the French program A la rencontre de Philippe (Furstenberg & Malone 1993). In both programs, the learner must



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make decisions about real-life problems based on information gleaned from interacting with the environment, in the case of Montevidisco, to find one’s way around a Spanish village, and in the case of A la rencontre de Philippe, to help a young Parisian locate an affordable apartment. Besides sparking interest in instructional design, the microworld metaphor has focused researchers on the affordances that different contexts offer to learners, that is, the opportunities for learning from interaction with the environment (Meskill, Mossop, & Bates 1999). The last two metaphors cited by Meskill – the tool metaphor and the community metaphor – are frequently invoked in current research studies, particularly those informed by sociocultural theory. At the heart of Vygotskyan and sociocultural approaches to language learning are the concepts of mediation and social learning (Lantolf 2000; Lantolf & Thorne 2006). Vygotsky emphasized that tools such as computers or even language itself mediates and controls human behavior and cognition (Wertsch 1991). In addition, sociocultural approaches emphasize the social or external nature and origins of internal mental operations. These two metaphors have taken on special relevance with the advent of social networks and online communities (e.g., Facebook & Myspace), a recent phenomenon that Meskill (2005) predicted will become the focus of language learning research in the near future: “Language teachers, learners, and researchers have much to explore regarding online communities where language is being used in highly social, highly productive ways. The community/meeting place metaphor holds perhaps the richest potential as a tool for examining second language acquisition and the development of identities” (p. 36). In the introduction to her edited volume entitled Language Acquisition and Language Socialization: Ecological Perspectives, Kramsch (2003) examined the dominant metaphors that “channel the imaginations” (p. 1) of second language teachers and researchers. Kramsch’s main argument is that the fields of language acquisition and language socialization have been guided by two competing metaphors, learner-as-machine and learner-as-apprentice. These metaphors have been organizing principles for so long in their respective disciplines that they are largely invisible today, that is, taken for granted by researchers trained in these fields. According to Kramsch, applied linguists are beginning to turn to yet another overarching metaphor – ecology – for fruitful ways to conceive of their research. While the applied linguistic embrace of the organic metaphor may be relatively recent, the other two metaphors hark back many years. Kramsch (2003) claimed that the learner-as-machine metaphor, the basis of language acquisition research, arose as the dominant metaphor in the field of psycholinguistics in the 1960s. When researchers conceptualize language learning in terms of this metaphor, “The language learner is seen as an information processor that receives input from caretakers, teachers and peers, processes this input into intake, and,

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ultimately, produces output of a measurable kind” (p. 1). Kramsch showed that such a metaphor naturally focused researchers on linguistic properties of the input and away from the role of context in language learning. In contrast, the field of language socialization had its origins in anthropological linguistics in the 1970s and 1980s (Ochs & Schieffelin 1979, 1983; Schieffelin & Ochs 1986). The dominant metaphor of this field, the learner-as-apprentice, led researchers to pay close attention to contextualized language use and to the learner as a member of a community: “The focus is not on the way symbolic systems are acquired, and grammatical and lexical paradigms are used to encode reality, but on the way language practices are organized within members of a community of language users” (Kramsch 2003: 2). Although metaphors illuminate some relationships and similarities, they invariably obscure others. As a consequence, researchers may run the risk of becoming “prisoners to their own metaphors” (Kramsch 2003: 3). For this reason, researchers have recently rallied around the holistic metaphor of ecology in an effort to synthesize the fields of acquisition and socialization and their opposing foci and frames of reference. Kramsch contended that the ecological metaphor has been prompted not only by a desire to acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between the cognitive and the social, but also by two recent developments: globalization and multicultural education. And at the heart of both of these developments lies telecommunications, specifically the Internet: “The Internet revolution has made researchers and practitioners even more aware of the importance of context in language development” (p. 3). Arguing that the Internet’s staggering growth in terms of both speed and reach has led to qualitative changes in human communication, Kramsch claimed that the Internet revolution “is not just a change in degree, but a change in kind” (p. 3). Even though Meskill (2005) and Kramsch (2003) pointed out that different metaphors have taken on special prominence at specific historical moments, it is important to remember that newer metaphors do not necessarily replace older ones. In fact, Kramsch explicitly stated that the ecological metaphor is not meant to be a replacement: “By embracing an ecological perspective [researchers] do not intend to replace existing metaphors” (p. 5). As noted, metaphors are created and disseminated by researchers in their efforts to conceptualize and understand new phenomena. Because new phenomena do not necessarily replace old phenomena, early metaphors often retain their relevance.



Research perspectives on online discourse

Criteria used for classifying CMC research Although the metaphors described in the last section are useful in classifying CMC research, there are many other relevant criteria for classification. In this section, different research criteria will be catalogued according to the four major approaches to CMC research: technological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and ecological. These criteria fall into three main categories: theoretical, methodological, and linguistic. Gleaned from a review of CMC research literature dating back to the early 1990s, these criteria have been chosen for examination based on their frequency and their co-occurrence with other criteria. It is important to bear in mind that just as in the case of metaphors, these various criteria are historically situated in the field.

Theoretical criteria In their review of online pedagogy and research, Kern, Warschauer, and Ware (2004) spoke of two phases – an early, more quantitative phase of research that focused primarily on the technology itself rather than on the theoretical issues of SLA or on the wider learning environment; and a second, more recent phase that better situates CMC research within language learning theory and describes more carefully the context of language learning and use. In a similar fashion, Huh and Hu (2005) discussed the various factors required for effective CALL research and noted that one of the primary weaknesses of most early studies was an apparent lack of theoretical framework. They referred to such studies as technocentric. The more neutral term technological is adopted in this essay to refer to an approach that takes the specific technology as its point of departure (e.g., local area networked computer application) and is not grounded in any specific SLA theory. In the first edition of the online journal Language Learning & Technology, Chapelle (1997) claimed that CALL studies were dominated by computational models that did not derive from SLA research per se. As a consequence, she contended that CALL was still in search of more appropriate research paradigms. To fill the perceived theoretical void, she argued for the applications of psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and constructivism. In particular, she called for future CALL researchers to adopt an interactionist approach and discourse analytic methods that had proven so successful for investigating instructed SLA. In this essay, the term psycholinguistic will be used to refer to any approach to CMC/CALL that derives from an input/output model of language acquisition and that takes negotiated interaction (Gass 1997; Long 1985) as its primary research focus.

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Two years later, in a commentary on Chapelle, Salaberry (1999) argued that the research agenda of CALL should pay greater attention to sociocultural approaches to language learning in general and CMC in particular. (Chapelle had made no mention of CMC in her previous article.) Furthermore, Salaberry noted that the development of a “valid research proposal for CALL should be attentive to important principled distinctions incorporated into various theoretical frameworks. For instance, the conceptualization of CALL systems as tools ….” (p. 106). Salaberry’s insistence on the tool metaphor for conceptualizing CALL is in keeping with his call for sociocultural approaches that emphasize language as a tool to mediate cognition and behavior. Salaberry ended his commentary by noting that “… the analysis of computer mediated communication, including the analysis of learners’ use of technical components that render CMC possible, deserves to be at the forefront of future research agendas” (p. 106). With the growth of virtual communities and the rise of theoretical concepts such as situated learning (Lave & Wenger 1991) and distributed cognition (Hutchins 1995), researchers have sought to expand the foci and metaphors of sociocultural approaches to encompass ever more contextual information. The result is an ecological approach. Van Lier (2004) described the ecological approach as the logical extension of a Vygotskyan sociocultural approach “in the light of present-day needs and knowledge” (p. 20). According to van Lier, an ecological approach differs from sociocultural theory by explicitly rejecting Cartesian dualism (language/context): “An ecological theory holds that if you take the context away there is no language left to be studied. It’s like an onion. You can’t peel away the layers and hope to get to the ‘real’ onion underneath: it’s layers all the way down. So it is with language: it’s context all the way down” (p. 20). Not surprisingly, researchers who adopt an ecological approach focus their research not on the acquisition of linguistic form but on the context and how learners use language (among other tools) to configure the context (Shin 2006). Other common foci of sociocultural and ecological approaches are identity construction and the relation between different levels of context or of the learning environment (learner, classroom, home, society at large). The central idea to an ecological approach to language learning is to view learners as living organisms engaged in a complex network of relationships with the other elements in the environment.

Methodological criteria In addition to the dominant theoretical frameworks, research on CMC can also be classified according to the methodologies employed. These methodologies are themselves bundles of various criteria: locus of study (e.g., classroom or real



Research perspectives on online discourse

world), control (e.g. computer vs. teacher vs. student), data type (quantitative vs. qualitative), tasks (pedagogical vs. authentic), number of subjects (many vs. few), and time frame (short-term vs. long-term). Methodological criteria tend to co-occur according to the four different paradigms. Earlier research was mainly comprised of short-term studies (anywhere from a few sessions to a semester) based on intact classes. The computer or the teacher set relevant experimental or pedagogical tasks and parameters that produced data for quantitative analysis (e.g., mouse clicks, number of T-units, number of turns at talk, etc.). In contrast, sociocultural and ecological studies tend to employ qualitative methods (ethnographic case studies, participant observation, diaries, interviews, etc.) and to examine fewer subjects over longer periods of time. Moreover, as the Internet grows, so grows the size and scope of the research studies: from a single networked class to international telecollaborations between partnered classrooms (Belz & Thorne 2006) to massive online social networks called virtual communities (Thorne, this volume).

Linguistic criteria Finally, different research approaches tend to privilege certain kinds of language use. For example, in teacher-fronted networked classrooms where students are given an explicitly pedagogical task to be performed in the L2, the use of the L1 is actively discouraged. In contrast, in sociocultural and ecological approaches where students generally have more autonomy, the L1 may be viewed as a resource or tool to mediate cognition during the language learning task. In general, more learner autonomy leads to more use of the L1, a greater range of discourse functions, non-standard forms and more language play (Warner 2004). While these criteria often travel together, the patterns of co-occurrence are not rigid, such as a study that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. These various criteria – theoretical, methodological, and linguistic – are displayed in Figure 1.

Approaches to CMC research This section takes a closer look at the four main approaches to CMC research outlined above: technological, psycholinguistic, sociocultural, and ecological. The distinguishing features of each approach will be described and prototypical studies will be examined.

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A. Theoretical Framework Approach Acronym Metaphors SLA theory

Technological CAI/CALL Tutor None/general

Psycholinguistic CALL/CMC Tutor/Tool Interactionist

Focus

Technology

Negotiated interac- Activity tion Linguistic forms Mediation Input/Output

Sociocultural CMC Tool Vygotskyan

Process/Identity

Ecological CMC Network/Community Vygotskyan/Social Semiotic Context Relation between levels Process/Identity

B. Methodological Framework Environment Control Data Tasks N of subjects Timeframe

Single class/ Paired classes Virtual communities Single class Telecollaboration (e.g. Myspace) Peer-to-peer Computer Teacher Student/Teacher Student Qualitative (open-ended) Quantitative (prescribed categories) Contrived/pedagogical Authentic Numerous (classes, cross-sectional) Few individuals (case studies) Short-term Long-term

C. Linguistic Framework Language use Language choice Modality

Standard/Referential Monolingual Written

Non-standard/Ludic, Emotive Multilingual Mixed

Figure 1.  Taxonomy of CMC research

Technological approaches A review of the CMC literature of the past two decades reveals that the technological approach may be something akin to a developmental stage. In other words, whenever a technology is new, it appears natural for researchers to conduct exploratory, descriptive studies in an attempt to assess the new technology’s potential benefits. These studies almost always compare and contrast the new technology with the traditional way of doing things, for example, synchronous written interaction in networked computer classrooms versus oral discussion in traditional classrooms. Although many scholars have criticized early research for its lack of theoretical framework, such descriptive studies perform a valuable service – they introduce the new technology to teachers and administrators, and they demonstrate how the new technology changes traditional student and teacher performance and roles. Kern, Ware, and Warschauer (2004) contended that studies appearing in the 1990s tended “to focus on the most quantifiable



Research perspectives on online discourse

and easily measured aspects of online communication” (p. 243). Moreover, these studies tended to stress the potential benefits of CMC for foreign language learning. The most commonly reported CMC benefits of these studies are the following: increased quantity and quality of L2 production (Beauvois 1992, 1997, 1998; Kelm 1992; Kern 1995; Warschauer 1996), increased L2 discourse functions (Chun 1994; Herring 1996; Kern 1995), greater L2 syntactic complexity (Kern 1995), equalization of student and teacher roles (Beauvois 1998; Kern 1995), and improved motivation (Beauvois 1992 1997 1998; Kelm 1992; Kern 1995). Beauvois (1998) and Kern (1995) are both typical exemplars of the technologist approach because they both explicitly compare synchronous networked computer ‘discussions’ using InterChange local area network (part of the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment) with traditional oral discussions. Kern (1995), a study investigating the use of CMC by second-year French students at University of California-Berkeley, quantifies the data in several ways: number and length of messages, number of sentences and T-units averaged per student, number and type of discourse functions produced, number of morphosyntactic features produced, and control of topic. In addition to an analysis of the discourse, Kern examined attitudinal data from a questionnaire administered after the sessions and found overwhelmingly positive reactions to the new technology. Like many short-term technologist studies, Kern’s study is based on only two class sessions (CMC session vs. traditional classroom discussion session). Beauvois (1998) looked at how third-semester French students use the same technology (InterChange software) under very similar conditions – to discuss a previously assigned reading. She evaluated the discourse along quantitative lines similar to those used by Kern (1995), but also included a discussion of online error correction, the evolution of conversations, and the circumstances of codeswitching, referred to as “reverting to the native language” (p. 200). Not only did she note similar benefits as those found in Kern – greater student participation, especially for quiet or shy students; greater L2 production; improved quality of L2 discourse – but, by reviewing transcripts with students, she also found that errors were frequently explicitly corrected either online or offline. Finally, she claimed that L1 use in the CMC condition is much less frequent than in the oral discussion condition. Beauvois emphasized that “the slowing down of the communicative process seems to bridge the gap between the oral and written communication for a number of students allowing [the students] to benefit more fully from the language learning process” (p. 213). She described the online discourse produced using the InterChange LAN as a “conversation in slow motion” (p. 198), a new kind of hybrid form of communication. In addition to the oft-stated criticism of an overly narrow focus on technology and an absence of theoretical framework, the main critique of early studies

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of technology is that they essentially put old wine in new bottles. In other words, these studies typically describe the application of a new technology to traditional pedagogical practices. Critics pointed out that the real innovation of any new technology may be overlooked by framing research in terms of traditional practices. In the case of Beauvois (1998) and Kern (1995), that traditional practice is a teacher-initiated discussion of an assigned reading. However, in defense of this line of research, such criticism misses the obvious point that the primary goal of technologist approaches is to help teachers – not researchers – understand new technology, and there appears no better way to do that than through comparative studies that take current pedagogical practice as the point of departure. Moreover, even as the Internet enters its second decade, there will always be new forms of technology (e.g., Skype, iPhone, etc.). As a consequence, technology-focused, descriptive research will continue to play an important role.

Psycholinguistic approaches A vocal proponent for more theoretically informed CALL research, Chapelle (1997, 1998, 2005) has repeatedly argued for the relevance of Interactionist SLA (Gass 1997; Long 1991, 1996; Long & Robinson 1998; Pica 1994). Based on the input hypothesis – the notion that comprehensible input is the primary ingredient of language acquisition – interactionist theory claims that the process of interaction holds the keys to getting learners to attend to linguistic forms and their contextualized meanings in the input. As interlocutors interact, they monitor their listeners’ comprehension and naturally make conversational adjustments as needed (e.g., repetitions, paraphrases, metalinguistic comments, etc.). Chapelle (2005) claimed that Interactionist Theory is largely based on Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis: One might sum up the benefits proposed by interaction theory as the means of prompting learners to direct their attention in useful ways to linguistic input. In this sense, the interaction hypothesis is related to the noticing hypothesis (Schmidt 1992) which hypothesizes the value of attention directed toward key linguistic features during second language tasks.  (p. 56)

An extension of the noticing hypothesis is Swain’s output hypothesis that states that learners may become aware of (notice) their own linguistic deficiencies while engaged in communication and make attempts to fix the problem by pushing themselves to use linguistic forms beyond their control (Swain 1995, 2000).



Research perspectives on online discourse

Chapelle (1998) translated the main points of the Interactionist SLA model (the input hypothesis, the output hypothesis and the noticing hypothesis) into “seven hypotheses relevant for developing multimedia CALL” (p. 23): 1. The linguistic characteristics of target language input need to be made  salient. 2. Learners should receive help in comprehending semantic and syntactic  aspect of linguistic input. 3. Learners need to have opportunities to produce target language output. 4. Learners need to notice errors in their own output. 5. Learners need to correct their linguistic output. 6. Learners need to engage in target language interaction whose structure can be modified for negotiation of meaning. 7. Learners should engage in L2 tasks designed to maximize opportunities for (pp. 23–25) good interaction. 

An empirical study by Blake (2000), framed in terms of Interactionist SLA, examined the use of a synchronous chat program, Remote Technical Assistance, in terms of the Interaction Hypothesis: the conditions for SLA are crucially enhanced by having L2 learners negotiate meaning with other speakers, native or otherwise. Among the benefits cited, these negotiations tend to increase input comprehensibility through language modifications – such as simplifications, elaborations, confirmation and comprehension checks, clarifications requests or recasts – which end up providing the L2 learner with the type of negative evidence deemed necessary by some SLA theories for continued language development… . (p. 121)

More precisely, the study examined the effect of task type (information gap, decision making, jigsaw puzzle) on the negotiated interaction of 25 dyads of intermediate learners of Spanish. Following work by Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993), Blake hypothesized that the jigsaw task and information gap task would lead to increased instances of successful negotiated interaction and thus be most beneficial to SLA. The results partially confirm the hypothesis by demonstrating a highly significant level of negotiated interaction during the jigsaw task but not during the other two task types. Furthermore, a closer inspection of the data revealed a predominance of lexical negotiation and a paucity of syntactic negotiation. Blake argued that the findings suggest that CMC may provide learners with the alleged benefits ascribed to the interaction hypothesis, that is, “apperceived input, which can subsequently be used to modify and improve their vocabulary” (p. 133). Building on the seven hypotheses for CALL research and instructional design advocated by Chapelle (1998), Doughty and Long (2003) proposed a set of

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methodological principles for CALL design that incorporates task-based learning into the interactionist paradigm. These principles are the following: 1. Use tasks, not texts as the unit of analysis. 2. Promote learning by doing. 3. Elaborate input (do not simplify, do not rely solely on ‘authentic’ texts). 4. Provide rich (not impoverished) input. 5. Encourage inductive (chunk) learning. 6. Focus on form. 7. Provide negative feedback. 8. Respect ‘learner syllabi’/developmental process. 9. Promote cooperative/collaborative learning. 10. Individualize instructions (according to communicative needs and  psycholinuistically).  (p. 52)

González-Lloret (2003) described a Spanish multimedia simulation program called En Busca de Esmeraldas based on these principles. Developed and used at the University of Hawai’i for teaching Spanish, En Busca de Esmeraldas “places students in a plot in which they are hired to help find a document at the University of Hawai’i. Students have the choice of either reading a letter or listening to a message on their answering machine from a woman in Spain who would like to hire them to search for a document at the University” (p. 87). Following Doughty and Long’s task-based learning principles, the program requires pairs of students to perform complementary tasks and exchange information as they navigate their way through the events and challenges of the 3-D storyworld. In addition to describing the task-based principles for the design of the online materials, González-Lloret assessed the program’s efficacy by conducting an empirical study to determine whether the materials lead to improved negotiated interaction. Based on transcripts of recorded interactions between eight learners (four dyads) using the program, González-Lloret examined the negotiation process following a model outlined by Doughty (2000) as illustrated in Figure 2. Trigger →

Signal →

Response →

Reaction

Lexical error Phonetic error Language/task

Confirmation check Clarification request Comprehension check

Repetition Expansion Reformulation Use of L1

Exclamation Non-verbal Correction complexity

(Figure 2 is cited with permission from González-Lloret 2003: 92)

Figure 2.  Negotiation proces . The complete online program may be accessed at http://marta.lll.hawaii.edu/enbusca



Research perspectives on online discourse

After coding the data for these negotiation and interaction features, she verified the active participation of both participants in the dyads. She found that unknown lexical items trigger the majority of negotiations (approximately 53%), a finding in keeping with Blake (2000). González-Lloret also noted instances of selfand other-correction that might reveal L2 acquisition. Her main finding was: the language produced by the participants during the simulation was typical of negotiation for meaning, where the main emphasis is on the completion of the task, and where language is used with its main communicative purpose in an economical way, without paying attention to the production of long, accurate constructions.  (p. 98)

Sociocultural In recent years there has been a marked increase in so-called social approaches to SLA (Block 2003). Block argued that researchers need to examine not only the individual and cognitive aspects of language learning but also the socially constructed learning process itself. A large part of this so-called social turn in SLA research derives from the application of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of mind to language learning. (For overviews of sociocultural theory, see Lantolf 2000; Lantolf & Thorne 2006.) Warschauer (2005) noted that previous CALL research conducted from a sociocultural perspective has largely focused on issues of culture, literacy, and identity in three specific contexts: individual networked classrooms, informal online learning, and telecollaborative exchanges between classes (Warschauer 1996; Warschauer & Kern 2000). Warschauer (1997) argued that there are three main aspects to Vygotskyan thought that are relevant to CALL and CMC research: mediation, social learning, and genetic analysis (p. 41). According to Lantolf (2000), “the most fundamental concept of sociocultural theory is that the mind is mediated” (p. 1). In essence, mediation implies an indirect relationship between the human mind and the world that is negotiated with the help of tools (frequently referred to as artifacts in the literature). These tools or cultural artifacts may be relatively concrete (e.g., a calculator, an abacus, fingers) or relatively abstract and symbolic (e.g., language, metaphor). Lantolf and Thorne (2006) explained succinctly the consequences of mediation for human learning: Vygotsky’s fundamental claim is that higher forms of human mental activity are mediated by culturally constructed auxiliary means…. These auxiliary means arise as a consequence of participation in cultural activities (for example, manufacturing goods, raising and educating children, playing, producing art, etc.) in which cultural artifacts (for example, books, paper, clocks, technology, toys, eating

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utensils, etc.) and cultural concepts (for example, self, person, family, time, literacy, law, religion, mind etc.) ‘interact in complex, dynamic ways with each other and with [biologically endowed] psychological phenonomena’ (Ratner 2002: 10).  (Lantolf & Thorne 2006: 59)

The above quotation captures another fundamental concept of Vygotskyan thought – the all-important social origin of higher mental functioning, a concept that Warschauer refers to as social learning. The Vygotskyan notion most often associated with social learning (also called apprenticeship learning) is the zone of proximal development (ZPD), defined as the distance between what a learner can accomplish on her own as opposed to what she can accomplish with the help of a more experienced peer or expert. Lantolf (2000) restated the ZPD as people who “co-construct contexts in which expertise emerges as a feature of the group” (p. 17). He pointed out the importance of social learning, “since without such a possibility it is difficult to imagine how expertise of any kind could ever arise; unless of course we were to assume an a priori biological endowment that specified the precise properties of the ability in question” (p. 17). Genetic analysis is the third fundamental concept that Warschauer mentioned in his outline of sociocultural theory and CMC. Socioculturalists maintain that human mental operations are best analyzed as a historical or developmental process. Vygotsky proposed four different genetic domains for the study of higher mental functions in humans: phylogenetic (development of the species during human evolution), sociocultural (development of human cultures), ontogenetic (development of an individual over the lifespan), and microgenetic (development of an individual during a particular task). Lantolf (2000) pointed out that most research has occurred on the ontogentic level where “the focus has been on exploring the ways in which abilities such as voluntary memory are formed in children through the integration of mediational means into the thinking process” (p. 3). A excellent example of CMC research framed in terms of sociocultural theory is Thorne’s 2003 study, an examination of various cultural influences on the use of Internet communication tools such as email or chat by foreign language learners. Thorne (2003) examined three case studies with the aid of the three fundamental sociocultural concepts – mediation, apprenticeship learning, and genetic analysis. In all three case studies, Thorne’s method is essentially microgenetic, that is, a close analysis of an individual’s development during a specific communicative event. In the first case study based on earlier research (Kramsch & Thorne 2002), Thorne analyzed apparent cultural mismatches between American college students learning French and their online partners, a group of French high school students. Thorne (2003) showed that the American and French interlocuters held conflicting expectations for online discourse:



Research perspectives on online discourse

What I would like to suggest is that a difference in communicative genres demonstrably thwarted satisfying interaction in this case of telecollaborative foreign language interaction. Trust and relationship-building for the Americans and truth value and negotiation of factual accuracy for the French involved differing goals, frames of reference, and perceptions of what is desirable, and even possible, through Internet-based communicative activity. (p. 46)

In the second case study, Thorne (2003) described the communication between an American and a French college student who expanded their relationship beyond the boundaries of the structured pedagogical activity. Thorne showed how the American student benefited from “the mediation of another person, specifically an age-peer who was willing to provide immediate and explicit linguistic feedback as part of a socially meaningful relationship” (p. 51) in order to learn French terms of address (tu vs. vous) as well as locative prepositions (en, dans, etc.). The interaction between the expert (a native French speaker) and the learner (an American student of French) is a model of apprenticeship learning in an informal context. In the third case study, Thorne (2003) reported on interviews conducted with American students who participated in a telecollaborative project. He noted that while the American students indicated general support for telecollaboration, they rejected the use of email, greatly preferring the use of instant messenger for what he calls “interpersonal age-peer relationship-building” (p. 57). Thorne deemed the use of email for peer-to-peer informal exchanges as “the wrong tool for the right job” (p. 54).

Ecological The latest theoretical approach to researching online discourse is the ecological approach (Kramsch 2003; Leather & van Dam 2003; van Lier 2004). Van Lier (2004) credits the 19th century German biologist Ernst Haeckel with coining the term ecology to refer to the “totality of relationships of an organism with all other organisms with which it comes into contact” (p. 3). Proponents of an ecological framework for analyzing online discourse argue that the Internet is best understood as a network of networks, or a system of interlocking systems, that is, an ecology. Van Lier (2004) claimed that an ecological approach to language learning shares much in common with sociocultural theory. In fact, van Lier sees the ecological approach to language learning as the natural extension of sociocultural theory. Nevertheless, despite the apparent affinities, the ecological approach distinguishes itself from sociocultural theory by providing a consistent theory of

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language learning situated within semiotics. Moreover, an ecological approach shifts the goal of research to the discovery of how the constituent parts of a complex system (be it an ecosystem or a computer network) form a whole. Van Lier contends that a major consequence of this relational emphasis is that any “research must be seen as a piece of the ecological puzzle, i.e., an effort must be made to see where and how it fits” (p. 207). Drawing on the work of the well-known developmental psychologist Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1993), who developed an ecological approach to human development, van Lier (2004) described educational ecology as a hierarchy of nested ecosystems: the lesson, the classroom, the school, the district, and so forth. According to van Lier, the “value of Bronfenbrenner’s model lies not in the nested set of systems per se, but in the focus on the relationships among the systems. These linkages allow the researcher to track instigative and debilitative forces between one ecosystem and another” (p. 210). An excellent application of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach to developmental systems comes from van Lier’s study of project-based language learning in two very different classrooms (van Lier 2003). Van Lier framed his study by noting that research on the benefits of computers in education has resulted in contradictory findings. He opined that traditional research has been unable to demonstrate which variables are consequential for learning in a technology-mediated environment because the object of study is too complex and dynamic: “One of the reasons that traditional research models do not work is that technology is a moving target: as soon as the description of a particular software or hardware appears in print, it is rendered obsolete by a new version or a totally different way of doing things” (p. 51). One of the major points of van Lier’s study is to demonstrate a principled way of handling the lack of comparability between learning contexts, in this case, a fourth-grade, dual immersion classroom of Anglo and Latino children from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds and an intensive ESL classroom of economically privileged, highly motivated adults. Using Bronfenbrenner’s analytic categories of nested systems (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem), van Lier (2003) showed that the efficacy of technology in project-based language learning depends on very different variables in the two classrooms. He suggested that in order to understand technologymediated peer interactions in the fourth-grade classroom, the researcher must begin by peeling back the outer layers of context, namely the historical and ideological practices surrounding bilingual education in American society, the macrosystemic level in Bronfenbrenner’s terms. Next, he peels back the exosystem layer (the community level) by analyzing the differences in performance between the Anglo students and the Latino students in terms of access to technology in their respective communities. In contrast to his analysis of the performance of



Research perspectives on online discourse

fourth-grade dual immersion students, van Lier argued that the researcher does not need to “cast the net of contextual research much wider than the language course and the institutional setting (the microsystem or mesosystem)” in order to understand the performance of the university ESL students (2003: 61). As such, his focus shifts to the classroom when analyzing the ESL students’ interactions. Two hallmarks of the ecological approach are apparent in van Lier’s (2003) study: reliance on close, ethnographic documentation and a focus on the relationships between systemic levels. On the face of things, these two widely divergent case studies are hardly comparable, much less generalizable. But van Lier argued that their informativeness lies in their particularities: “In sum, while the classroom activities described cannot be generalized, it is likely that some of the best things that happen in these classrooms can be particularized as part of pedagogically sound curricula in other settings” (p. 57). Like most studies of interaction, van Lier’s study is based, in large part, on the careful analysis of transcribed data. However, unlike in psycholinguistic approaches, the transcribed data is not about negotiated interaction that leads to increased awareness of form-meaning connections per se, but rather is about social concepts such as learner autonomy or increasing diversity of actions and responses to affordances in the setting. Moreover, these transcribed data are related to other data concerning belief systems and educational policies. In fact, given that the purview is so large – the educational ecosystem itself – the actual transcribed data are only small pieces to a much larger puzzle.

Conclusion In his recent overview of language learning and technology, Kern (2006) pointed out that the disappearance of the acronym CALL (computer-assisted language learning) in educational scholarship signals an important shift in perspective and research agenda. Computers are no longer conceptualized as an add-on or as a special context for language learning, but rather they are now seen as an integral part of everyday communication. In other words, the disappearance of the acronym CALL indicates that computer technology has reached a level of ubiquity in our society and, as a consequence, invisibility. Even the acronym CMC may be headed for extinction because computer communication technologies are converging rapidly with other digital technologies (e.g. the appearance of Apple’s iPhone, a hand-held device that combines a mobile phone with an iPod and Internet access). As communication technologies grow more powerful and convergent, they expand and diversify the array of social contexts of communication, each with

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it own exigencies and patterns of interaction: chatrooms, threaded discussions, listservs, virtual communities, and so forth. It should come as no surprise then that the research literature is currently undergoing a similar expansion and diversification. New research approaches to online language learner discourse, most notably those that examine informal and non-instructed contexts as discussed above, have greatly increased. Kern (2006) noted that ethnographic research methodology will become more relevant “as more technology-mediated language learning and language use takes place (a) outside of educational institutions and even outside of educational frameworks, and (b) across diverse social, cultural, socioeconomic, and political contexts” (p. 187). Nevertheless, the rise of the newer, more socially-oriented approaches has not put an end to psycholinguistic or technological approaches which have retained their relevance to the field. That the Internet is having an enormous impact on language learning and language teaching is certainly beyond debate. However, what is debatable is how best to describe that relationship. For instance, the discussion of Crystal’s book is framed in terms of how the Internet has an impact on language. Such an approach implies that the Internet is causing language and literacy to change. But what impact does language and literacy have on the Internet? The causation of social and educational change is rarely simple and rarely flows in one direction. Murray (2000) made this point in her cogent discussion of changing technologies and literacies. She noted that scholars often equate the Internet to the introduction of the printing press in the 15th century and that the printing press is generally understood to have triggered widespread changes in literacy practices. The parallel is based on the notion that technological revolutions entail rapid and far-reaching social change that is the inevitable result of the introduction of a major new technology. In this view, change in the technologies of literacy affect literacy practices and communities: The transformation from an oral culture to a literate one reshaped consciousness; the introduction of alphabetic writing in ancient Greece transformed Greek thought; the invention of the printing press moved the power of scholar-priests to more democratic institutions and promoted individualism, nationalism, and secularism. Scholars thus claim that the introduction of the computer will inevitably result in a different social consciousness of what literacy is and how it functions in individuals and society.  (p. 43)

Murray’s main contention is that technology and society are in a complex, mutual relationship. In terms of the field of foreign language pedagogy and foreign language learning research, the Internet has not caused change so much as it has hastened changes that were already well underway in the profession. In particular, the rise of the Internet has coincided with a documented paradigm shift towards social approaches to language learning, that is, a shift from a psycholinguistic



Research perspectives on online discourse

approach to a sociocultural approach to, more recently, an ecological approach. This development is not surprising, because, as Crystal (2001) pointed out echoing the words of Berners-Lee, the central figure in the creation of the Internet, the Internet is “not just a technological fact; it is a social fact” (p. 237). Thus, it appears that the massive size and rapid spread of the Internet have made it virtually impossible for language researchers to ignore the centrality of the social context in human interaction and language learning. More important, according to Crystal, is the very real possibility that mediating discourse online may one day be more prevalent than face-to-face interaction (p. 241). Such a mind-boggling scenario underscores the importance of further research for understanding language learning and language use online.

References Beauvois, M. H. (1992). Computer-assisted classroom discussion in the foreign language classroom: Conversation in slow motion. Foreign Language Annals, 25, 455–464. Beauvois, M. H. (1997). Write to speak: The effects of electronic communication on the oral achievement of fourth semester French students. In J. Muyskens (Ed.), New ways of learning and teaching: Issues in language program direction (pp. 93–115). Boston, MA: Heinle. Beauvois, M. H. (1998). Conversations in slow motion: Computer-mediated communication in the foreign language classroom. Canadian Modern Language Review, 54, 198–214. Belz, J. & Thorne, S. (Eds). (2006). Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education. 2005 AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction, Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle. Blake, R. (2000). Computer mediated communication: A window on L2 Spanish interlanguage. Language Learning & Technology, 4, 120–136. Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1993). The ecology of cognitive development: Research models and fugitive findings. In R. Wozniak & K. W. Fischer (Eds.), Development in context: Acting and thinking in specific environments (pp. 3–44). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bush, C. & Larson, J. (1983). Montevidisco [Computer software] (Version 1.00). Provo, UT: Brigham Young University. Chapelle, C. (1997). CALL in the year 2000: Still in search of research paradigms? Language Learning & Technology, 1, 19–43. Chapelle, C. (1998). Multimedia CALL: Lessons to be learned from research on instructed SLA. Language Learning & Technology, 2, 22–34. Chapelle, C. (2005). Interactionist SLA theory in CALL research. In J. Egbert & G. M. Petrie (Eds.), CALL research perspectives (pp. 53–64). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Chun, D. M. (1994). Using computer networking to facilitate the acquisition of interactive competence. System, 22, 17–31. Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the internet. Cambridge: CUP.

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Doughty, C. (2000). Negotiating the L2 linguistic environment. University of Hawai’i Working Papers in ESL, 18, 47–83. Doughty, C. & Long, M. (2003). Optimal psycholinguistic environments for distance foreign language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 7, 50–80. Egbert, J. L. & Petrie, G. M. (Eds.). (2005). CALL research perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Furstenberg, G. & Malone, S. (1993). A la rencontre de Philippe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gass, S. (1997). Input, interaction, and the second language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. González-Lloret, M. (2003). Designing task-based CALL to promote interaction: En busca de esmeraldas. Language Learning & Technology, 7, 86–104. Herring, S. (Ed.). (1996). Computer-mediated communication. Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Higgins, J. (1988). Language learners and computers. London: Longman. Huh, K. & Hu, W. (2005). Criteria for effective CALL research. In J. L. Egbert & G. M. Petrie (Eds.), CALL research perspectives (pp. 9–21). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Kelm, O. R. (1992). The use of synchronous computer networks in second language instruction: A preliminary report. Foreign Language Annals, 25, 441–454. Kern, R. (1995). Restructuring classroom interaction with networked computers: Effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. Modern Language Journal, 79, 457– 476. Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40, 183–210. Kern, R., Ware, P., & Warschauer, M. (2004). Crossing frontiers: New directions in online pedagogy and research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 243–260. Kramsch, C. (2003). Introduction: How can we tell the dancer from the dance? In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 1–30). London: Continuum. Kramsch, C. & Thorne, S. (2002). Foreign language learning as global communicative practice. In D. Block & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 83–100). London: Routledge. Lantolf, J. P. (Ed.). (2000). Sociocultural theory and second language learning. Oxford: OUP. Lantolf, J. P. & Thorne, S. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. Oxford: OUP. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: CUP. Leather, J. & van Dam, J. (Eds.). (2003). Ecology of language acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Long, M. (1985). Input in second language acquisition theory. In S. Gass & C. G. Madden (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 377–393). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Long, M. (1991). Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In C. Kramsch & R. Ginsberg (Eds.), Foreign language research on second language acquisition (pp. 39–52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Long, M. (1996). The role of linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. C. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 413– 468). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.



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Long, M. & Robinson, P. (1998). Theory, research and practice. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 15–41). Cambridge: CUP. Meskill, C. (2005). Metaphors that shape and guide CALL research. In J. Egbert & G. M. Petrie (Eds.), CALL research perspectives (pp. 25–40). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Meskill, C., Mossop, J., & Bates, R. (1999). Electronic texts and English as a second language environment. Albany, NY: National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement. Murray, D. E. (2000). Changing technologies, changing literacy communities? Language Learning & Technology, 4, 43–58. Och, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. (1979). Developmental pragmatics. New York, NY: Academic Press. Och, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. (1983). Acquiring conversational competence. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas. New York, NY: Basic Books. Petrie, G. (2005). Toward a cartography of CALL. In J. Egbert & G. M. Petrie (Eds.), CALL research perspectives (pp. 193–196). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Pica, T. (1994). Research on negotiation: What does it reveal about second language-Learning conditions, processes and outcomes? Language Learning, 44, 493–527. Pica, T., Kanagy, R., & Falodun, J. (1993). Choosing and using communication tasks for second language instruction. In G. Crookes & S. Gass (Eds.), Tasks and language learning: Integrating theory and practice, Vol. 1 (pp. 9–34). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Ratner, C. (2002). Cultural psychology: Theory and method. New York, NY: Kluwer/Plenum. Salaberry, R. (1999). Commentary on Carol Chapelle’s CALL in the year 2000. Language Learning & Technology, 3, 104–107. Schieffelin, B. B. & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge: CUP. Schmidt, R. (1992). Awareness and second language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 13, 206–226. Shin, D.-S. (2006). ESL students’ computer-mediated communication practices: Context configuration. Language Learning & Technology, 10, 65–84. Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principle and practice in applied linguistics. Studies in honor of H. G. Widdowson (pp. 125–144). Oxford: OUP. Swain, M. (2000). The output hypothesis and beyond: Mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 97–114). Oxford: OUP. Thorne, S. (2003). Artifacts and culture-of-use in intercultural communication. Language Learning & Technology, 7, 38–67. van Lier, L. (2003). A tale of two computer classrooms: The ecology of project-based language learning. In J. Leather & J. van Dam (Eds.), Ecology of language acquisition (pp. 49–64). Dordrecht: Kluwer. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Warner, C. (2004). It’s just a game, right? Types of play in foreign language CMC. Language Learning & Technology, 8, 69–87. Warschauer, M. (1996). Comparing face-to-face and electronic communication in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal, 13, 7–26.

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Warschauer, M. (2005). Sociocultural perspectives on CALL. In J. Egbert & G. M. Petrie (Eds.), CALL research perspectives (pp. 41–51). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Warschauer, M. & Kern, R. (Eds.). (2000). Networked-based language teaching: Concepts and practice. Cambridge: CUP. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A Sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

part ii

Creating collaboration

Postcards from the (turbulent) edge (of chaos) Complexity theory and computer  mediated communication Neil H. Johnson University of Aizu

This chapter presents data from two graduate seminars at the University of Arizona that illustrate how classroom activities and curriculum can be meaningfully supported by the use of a computer-mediated learning environment. The transcripts from postings made in both courses are analyzed and related to dynamic systems theory. It is argued that the data captures characteristics of learning as a dynamic open system, the central idea in dynamic systems theory (also known as complexity or chaos theory), as discussed by Gleick (1987) and Larsen-Freeman (1997a, 1997b, 2002). The suggestion is that computernetwork-based tools offer a useful communicative space for establishing and fostering interdependence and collaboration among students. This theoretical framework provides potentially useful ways of understanding the complex and nonlinear aspects of language learning as interactive social processes and practices.

In this chapter, the meaning-making interactions of graduate students within a computer-mediated learning environment are described from a dynamic systems or complexity theory perspective. Focusing on learner interaction in this way involves a particular view of language, learning, and the possibilities afforded by computer-networked learning systems. It involves thinking that is part of what Watson-Gegeo (2004) described as the “paradigm shift in human and social sciences that is revolutionizing the way we view mind, language, epistemology and learning” (p. 331). This shift, or social turn, in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) studies specifically, complements the mainstream SLA research that works within linear notions of cause and effect and notions that isolate and test for variables that necessarily exclude issues of sociocultural context

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and the individuality and agency of the learner. An approach based in complexity theory allows for the exploration and engagement with the multifaceted nature of interaction within any given learning situation, and as such, is broadly compatible with the ecological metaphor (Kramsch 2002; van Lier 2004) for language socialization as well as with the growing body of work in sociocultural theory and language pedagogy (for an overview see Lantolf & Thorne 2006). Hill (2003), for example, specifically draws comparisons with the nonlinear processes highlighted by complexity theory and the learning that takes place within the Vygotskyan zone of proximal development. The commensurability of these two theoretical positions is, however, yet to be determined, although van Lier (2004) located both theories within a broad ecological, semiotic perspective to language and education. Indeed, the application of dynamic systems theory to applied linguistics in general has yet to be understood or developed fully, but the promise it holds for understanding what might be otherwise seen as overly complicated contextual factors and anomalous learner interaction, both in and outside of the language classroom, means that it is surely worth further consideration. In this chapter, I will apply some of the basic principles of dynamic systems theory to small samples of data from two graduate-level classes that communicated extensively outside of the classroom through technology, and discuss the insights and implications of this application. In both examples, small groups of graduate students, both native and nonnative English speakers, met for 2½ hour sessions, once a week, in a classroom developed for computer-network based interaction. The learners and instructor made considerable use of the WebCT® system that allowed for asynchronous discussions to be threaded and continued throughout the 16-week semester. Students were encouraged to discuss theoretical issues arising during class discussions or readings, and also to manage the class-based collaborative work that was an important component of this particular course.

Computer-mediated communication As Thorne and Payne (2005) pointed out in their recent review of the language learning and technology field, a third generation of computer usage in language teaching and learning is now a reality. The most recent trends are currently toward what is termed device-agnostic CMC, involving a clear shift away from the time when technology was seen as a useful device primarily for the drilling of discrete linguistic items. Computer-mediated communication may be broadly defined as the use of computers and computer networks for communication purposes. Synchronous and asynchronous forms include chat, email, Wikis, and dis-



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cussion-based message boards. Warschauer and Kern (2000) suggested that these tools provide potentially profound possibilities: “These new technologies do not only serve the new teaching/learning paradigms, they also help shape the new paradigms. The very existence of networked computers creates possibilities for new kinds of communication” (p. 12). Thinking about CMC from an ecological perspective allows us to see these learning media as offering different affordances for learning. The idea of affordances is defined by van Lier (2004) as “a relationship between an organism (a learner in our case) and the environment, that signals an opportunity for or inhibition of action” (p. 4). The affordances of the CMC environment potentially include new ways for students to collaborate and co-construct knowledge and meaning, presenting as they do, a space where “access is available and engagement encouraged” (van Lier 2000: 253). This technological move toward network-based learning is perhaps a part of larger developments in the workplace and in communication on a societal and even a global level. Indeed, as the world becomes increasingly global in nature, to some extent based on the new literacies of technology and information, there is a risk that the world is eventually going to become divided between individuals who have electronic literacy and individuals who do not. Gee (2000: 43) described this technological revolution as the “new Fordism” in terms of how it has changed global capitalism. We have gone beyond the old production capitalism into the information-based capitalism that makes very different demands on the citizens under its employ. It is suggested that economic marginality awaits people who do not adapt to the new ways of thinking and operating that characterize the new global capitalism, which is increasingly based on networked and socially situated ways of thinking and operating. It is an economy demanding ever-increasing flexibility and new ways of interacting with information and technology from participants. It follows, then, that education should keep ahead of these changes in the broader society – mindful perhaps of the reservations that critical educators and others may have about the ways in which technology is changing the world around us. In this study, technology, in the form of asynchronous message boards, was purposely employed by the class instructor, to try to reshape the ways students interacted and collaborated, in keeping with the stated objectives of the class which were to create, explore, and further collaboration and interdependent learning among the participants. Because this explicit and specific goal of this graduate level seminar (Wildner-Bassett 2002) was situated within the paradigm shift mentioned previously, it is worthwhile to consider the role that computer-mediated communication played in the realization of the course objectives.

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Complexity theory In rejecting the idea of learning as a simple cause and effect process, with tokens of knowledge being passed from someone who knows to those who do not, we must simultaneously embrace an alternate view. In this belief, I follow the lead given by Larsen-Freeman (1997a, 2002) Leather and van Dam (2002), van Lier (2000, 2002, 2004), and Wildner-Bassett (2005) in applying the theoretical understanding of complexity theory to allow educators interested in learner discourse to understand further the dynamic ways in which learners interact and create meaning for themselves and each other. Van Lier (2004) made this application explicit: Within an ecosystem, including any social ecosystem (a family, a classroom, a school) a large number of influences are present in a partially chaotic, unpredictable and uncontrolled way…a complex order emerges…is dynamic rather than static and provides affordances for active participants. Learning emerges as part of the affordances being picked up for further action. (p. 8)

The conceptual basis of complexity theory came to public consciousness in two bestselling works that detailed the possibilities offered by developments in scientific thought and inquiry: Gleick’s (1987) Chaos: towards a new kind of Science and Waldrop’s (1992) Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. These models were first related to applied linguistics in the influential work of Larsen-Freeman (1997a, 2002), and have since been developed by other research in language education (Cameron 2003; Hill 2003; Mallows 2002). These ideas have resonated elsewhere in research on development and cognition. For example, Bates and Thelen (2003) made a case for linking connectionist theories of mind with dynamic systems theory. Similarly, Garson (1998) investigated ways in which the brain’s function is best understood by, and is dependent upon, the functioning of a dynamic system. Larsen-Freeman (2000) described language itself as a dynamic system comprising multiple elements, such as syntax, morphology, phonology, and so forth, interacting together through use over time in nonlinear and unpredictable ways and producing diachronic change and variation. This work led Larsen-Freeman to coin the term grammaring (2003) as a way of capturing this dynamic nature of language in use. Cameron (2003) examined how discourse is created from such interacting elements of use and concluded that language, at the discoursal level, can be seen as a dynamic system. Discoursal features such as metaphor, then, may be better explained by considering them as attractors (a set to which the system evolves after a sufficient period of time). Indeed, interest is growing across disciplines in the applications for research that this “new science” offers. Outlined by Larsen-Freeman (1997a), the basic tenets of complexity theory offer a potentially useful framework for understanding lan-



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guage acquisition processes (see also van Lier 2004, for an overview of the theory and applications for language pedagogy and learning). I will now sketch the main features of this theory and subsequently apply these to the research context with which I am concerned.

Dynamic, complex, nonlinear Complex systems are defined as being made up of many, often diverse, components that interact together over time. The components react to the environment and to each other, meaning that even in a state of eqilibrium, the system is never fixed or fully static. Order within the system emerges out of these interactions in cyclical shifts of energy and activity that may take the system toward what is referred to as the edge of chaos. It is at these moments that restructuring in the dynamics of the system will occur. The shifts in energy can be triggered by seemingly insignificant changes in the environment whereas what might be taken as a massive trigger within such a system may have little or no effect at all. This aspect of the systems is well known as the butterfly effect. This is the reason, for example, that the weather is notoriously difficult to predict, because minute shifts in the conditions can have dramatic consequences when magnified through further changes as they develop over time.

Chaotic, unpredictable, sensitive to initial conditions The chaotic and unpredictable nature of a dynamic system is seen within the dynamic interaction over time that defines it. It is certain that change will occur, but it is impossible to predict when and why these transformations will arise. An often-cited example is the movement of a tiny pebble on a mountainside triggering an avalanche. That the avalanche was coming was not in doubt, but when exactly it was to be triggered was uncertain and the smallest movement of one component within the overall system ultimately produced it. The avalanche itself, incidentally, can be seen as a restructuring of the system of the mountain and its immediate ecology. The term initial conditions refers to the components of the system and how they relate to each other and the environment. The effects of their relationship are magnified as interactions take place over time, and large divergences may appear from what were initially very small differences. In terms of pedagogy, it is useful to remember that no two lessons ever seem to unfold in the same way. A lesson plan that worked brilliantly the previous semester may suddenly appear to be simply not effective. This change in outcome can perhaps

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be explained by a change in the initial conditions of the lesson – different students and perhaps even a change in the meeting time of the class.

Open, self-organizing, feedback-sensitive, adaptive A dynamic system is said to be open because it must, by definition, be receiving energy from the environment within which it exists. If the system is closed and cut-off from that environment, it will simply cease to be. Because the elements of the system are located within a larger system and not merely haphazardly interacting, they will self-organize to maintain the integrity of the system itself. There are boundaries and rules about what can happen in that system. To expand on the weather example, there are an infinite number of possible weather variations, but because these variations fall within the attractor of a climate, the attractor state is confined within the climactic system. Order and restructurings depend on the fact that the system is feedback sensitive, which means that there is always going to be an element of unpredictability and instability present. “Positive feedback kicks evolution forward” as Briggs (1992) (cited in Larsen-Freeman 1997a: 145) explained. If the evolutionary patterns of species, for further illustration, are dynamic, complex systems as suggested, then the two poles of positive and negative feedback are what drive the evolutionary process forward. The species are, then, seen as not merely responding to their environment passively but also as interacting with it to produce the best and most advantageous outcomes – in other words, self-organizing through feedback from interaction. To return to the classroom example, the dynamics of any classroom will necessarily change through the course of a lesson period, a week, and a semester, as the different participants interact in multiple ways. Teachers often talk informally about a class that has become difficult to teach after some unexpected event or interaction that has taken place. Such changes in classroom functioning are, of course, impossible to predict, and yet may have serious implications for the learning that takes place. Understanding why they occur could potentially improve classroom management.

Strange attractors, fractal shape “The path that a dynamic system takes can be traced in space and is called an attractor” (Larsen-Freeman 1997a: 145). The attractors or paths in dynamic systems are called strange because of their unpredictable and nonlinear nature. The tracing of the dynamic system paths for the data in this study takes the form of a simple graph, which highlights the ebb and flow of student interactions over time throughout a semester. For every class, such a path would, of course, be



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different as the interactants self-organize and interact with their environments and each other. The term fractal refers to the idea of self-similarity at different magnification within a system. Agar (2005) cited the example of the stock market to highlight this phenomenon. Taken over a year, the fluctuations of a market will give rise to a pattern when charted through time on a graph. These patterns can be reflected at different time scales from a month, week, day, and even down to the hour. The important point of this similarity to the theory is that it suggests continuous dynamism within the system; even when it appears to be static, magnification to some degree will reveal activity and change.

Complexity and a CMC learning environment In this study I am interested in the dynamic, ongoing cycles of the learners within the classroom-based CMC system. The notions of stability, instability, open-system, and chaos match to a great degree the fluctuations of creativity and interaction within a classroom and CMC environment. The idea that the system shifts, breaks down, and restructures itself on a different plane also seems to capture some of the essence in what happens when groups of learners come together and try to collaborate in ways that are unfamiliar to them. The paradigm shift necessary to create true collaboration and interdependence among learners was the key element in providing the framework for interaction in this instance. The WebCT® system provided the tool to enable this shift. Other outcomes were dependent upon the learners and instructor to negotiate and navigate as the semester unfolded. In Table 1, the central notions of dynamic systems theory as outlined previously, have been applied to a CMC classroom environment. As mentioned, the initial conditions of any class are necessarily complex and unique. Student identities – how they identify themselves and are identified by discourse (e.g., Siegal 1996) within a situation or class – will of course be multiple and changing over time, depending on how the students relate to the course itself, their peers, their instructor, and their own sense of self. Identity will necessarily intersect with the evolving trajectories of the students. Developed by Lave and Wenger (1991), the notion of a trajectory attempts to capture the dynamic nature of participant engagement with a community. It is contingent upon a range of factors connected to how a person views him or herself in relation to the community and its practices. For example, if a student perceives a class as crucial to his or her development rather than as simply a filler class for credit, this perception influences how that student works and responds in the class. These are, in a sense, hidden variables, and yet consideration of their potential and realized impact provides insight into the multifaceted nature of teaching. The idea of the fractal,

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Table 1.  Complexity theory and CMC Features of a complex, dynamic system

Applied to interaction and learning in a CMC environment

Sensitive to initial conditions

Student identities, needs, trajectories. Syllabus, materials, context, etc. Necessarily different for each class. System evolves over the semester as individual students interact with their learning environment and initial conditions. Composed of many diverse individuals that interact in nonlinear and unpredictable ways. Resistance can be seen as chaotic turbulence from which new order may emerge. Shifts in behavior in student learning and interaction patterns occur throughout the semester. The members of the class also belong simultaneously to many other systems and bring their ideas and suggestions into the system as it progresses. The instructor may also provide “feedback” in the traditional understanding. The path that the class postings/discussions and learning takes through the semester is not predictable. Levels of interaction and activity within the system are reflected at different time scales throughout the semester of participation. The similar patterns that emerge suggest continuous shifts and dynamism.

Dynamic, open Complex, emergent

Self-organizing, adaptive Feedback, sensitive

Strange attractors Fractal

Note: Adapted from Larsen-Freeman (1997a).

in which levels of interaction are repeated on different planes, and on different scales, throughout a system has not yet been applied to a classroom situation. It could be, for example, that, as energy within the class shifts, patterns of interaction inside the classroom at the more microlevel of group discussion are reflected in the class as a whole or within the CMC interaction. The ways in which different aspects of a learning ecology complement and reinforce each other, or not, is an interesting area for further research in exploring the dynamics of pedagogical practice and outcomes. I suggest, then, that the theoretical perspective of a dynamic system offers a different and potentially useful perspective on learner interaction. This perspective locates the learner within their full social situation and further sees the participants as individuals with complex and changing needs and wants within the classroom context. The central question with which I approach the data from the WebCT® learning environment is: What restructuring of interaction patterns and outcomes emerge in the postings of a group of learners as they come together and interact in a specific context?



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The study The research context The data are taken from the asynchronous WebCT® postings from two graduate-level courses, both titled, “Pedagogy of Cultural Change: Non-foundational Paradigms and CMC in Real Life Classroms,” in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program at the University of Arizona. WebCT® offered an online web space, organized by the instructor, that housed the syllabi, synchronous chat, grade updates, and asynchronous, threaded discussion boards. Dr. Mary Wildner-Bassett taught both of these classes in the COHLab, which is both a physical facility and a theoretical, research-based project developed in the College of Humanities at the University of Arizona. (The graduate students were either native speakers of English or highly proficient nonnative speakers of English.) The classes were small, 6 students in class 1, which took place in the fall of 2002, and 5 students in class 2, which convened in the spring of 2004. The classes met for 2½ hours, once a week, for 16 weeks, and students were encouraged to use the WEBCT® class site to collaborate and discuss with their fellow students and the instructor. The majority of the postings were made outside of class time, but postings and activities were also recorded in class time, such as a weekly “one minute reflection” at the end of each class period. The goal of the class, as described on the syllabus, was to: “think and live beyond the constraints of the still dominant cultures of the classroom and of its related research to create new communities of knowing” (Wildner-Bassett, General Rationale). In other words, the students were asked to theorize and study about different ways of learning simultaneously within a CMC framework as well as to live the paradigm shift toward collaborative, constructivist approaches in their own activity as students.

The data A complexity theory perspective provides the opportunity to think about classroom interactions in several ways. At the microlevel we may be concerned with the details of how the interactions are operating to create new knowledge and understandings or what Mercer (1995) termed the guided construction of knowledge (p. 9). At the macrolevel we can also consider the general ways in which the system organizes, structures, and changes itself over time. For this reason, the

. A full description of the COHLab and its functions and operations can be found in Wildner-Bassett (2002) and McBride (2005).

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data from the two discussion boards was first examined for the basic number of contributions over time (see Figures 1 and 2). The calculation of the graph data takes no account of the length of a posting, or its nature, or whether it was posted inside or outside of class time. The majority of the postings were, however, made outside of class time. The purpose of counting the number of postings was to try to capture the dynamics of the energy within the systems as the learners progressed through the semester. The resultant graphs offer a very general insight

Figure 1.  Graph showing the attractor path of classroom interaction for class 1,  Fall 2002

Figure 2.  Graph showing the attractor path of classroom interaction for class 2,  Spring 2004



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into ways the students’ participation changed throughout the semester. In terms of complexity theory, I have then drawn an attractor, or path, for each dynamic system. Once these general trends were established, I thought it would be insightful to look at the microlevel interactions at different points during the semester to examine what was happening within the system when the sudden shifts in activity appeared to be taking place. These points represent places of change at the edge of chaos: points at which the classes, as a system, are potentially open to transformation in how the elements comprising the system interact and interrelate. For example, in the first class it is interesting to understand what happens within the class dynamics to create the large spikes in activity that take place in weeks 2 and 3. Similarly in the second set of data, around week 11, there appears to be a sudden and dramatic shift in activity after a period of relative inactivity. The following data from both classes offer insight on these moments in the semester. The interactions in both cases appeared within three days of the initial posting at the point indicated by the arrow on the graphs.

Interaction analysis and discussion of class 1 postings Example 1 shows the postings made by members of the class around week 3 of the semester. In class posting 1, Lena mentions the word tacit. Laura (posting 2) does not fully understand this term and seeks clarification on the discussion board. This query triggers a series of discussion postings in which students share personal narratives about their experiences as teachers and learners and thereby co-create an understanding of this term within the context of the class. Further discussion, elaboration, and collaboration ensue in the postings, which ultimately involve all members of the class as discussion moves to kinds of knowledge related to the notions of tacit knowledge, feedback, and clarification (postings 4–7). From a dynamic systems perspective, it is interesting how this interaction occurs in a specifically nonlinear and unpredictable way: there are sudden changes in the interaction both in terms of amount of interaction and depth of discussion. The almost casual question at the end of a routine message causes a surge in activity within the system and is responsible for generating what we can assume is meaningful interaction and a collaborative exploration of meaning within the group. As van Lier (2004) stated, “Learning emerges as part of the affordances being picked up for further action” (p. 8), a notion that seems to be borne out by this example, . The names of the participants have been changed and prior consent was obtained as part of the COHLab project.

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Example 1.  Asynchronous web postings for class 1 Class 1. WebCT® postings between Monday and Thursday – week 3 Posting 1 Posting 2

Posting 3

Posting 4

Posting 5

Posting 6

Posting 7

Laura: He successfully finished the activity and got to know what he was supposed to do and how to organize his language on the tacit ground. Lena: This just feels strange at the moment because I learned “tacit” as a new word just the day before yesterday and memorized it as “something, which cannot be described”. Ok. Let’s describe something that cannot be described and I am not quite sure I get it… Petra: Tacit knowledge is unspoken knowledge. Tacit knowledge would be assumptions that we carry on a topic such as language learning and teaching. An assumption that I carry (and I’m not sure if I’m answering this question correctly) about learning and teaching is that it is important to have a student-centered environment … that student centeredness is “good” it is “the best way”. And this has been a big part of my belief system. John: Tacit knowledge, I’m really not sure I have a complete grasp of what this type of knowledge entails. I think part of my problem is that I have contradictory notions of what “knowledge” is. A part of me views it as a collection of facts, while another part of me sees it as a process. Laura: I think knowledge is both a process and knowing about facts. It is just that the “knowing of facts” develops or changes over the course of time (either because of experience, as in Petra’s case, or because of you acquiring more facts and thus shaping your knowledge) and this development of the “knowing of facts” of course happens as a process. Katrina: Two examples of tacit knowledge for me are: the role of grammar teaching and critical period hypothesis. The first example is probably the more interesting, for I have changed my mind on it several different times in the past 5 years ... Instructor: I think you do indeed grasp the meaning of tacit. Literally, it means “silent”. So silent knowledge or assumptions, in this context, would be what is working in us but never mentioned or spoken about. It is also, thus, hard to describe.

in which the web postings themselves become a part of the learning ecology of the class, offering the students opportunity for further action and development. Personal narrative has been demonstrated to be one of the most important ways people make sense of their own experience (Polkinghorne 1988); the use of such narratives in this context suggests a high level of personal involvement and engagement from the participants. This series of postings also exemplify an affordance provided by the ecology of the learning environment within which the students are interacting. The affordance, in this example, emerges from the different perspectives, experiences, and understandings that the class participants bring to the learning situation. It is the online space that allows the learners to interact and explore these differences that then become a potential resource for learning.



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Example 2.  Asynchronous web postings for class 2 Class 2. WebCT® postings between Monday and Thursday – week 11 Tom: Well, I guess I give up! I suppose I’ll write up my research as a paper and hand that in and present the paper on the final day of class. Posting 2 Jane: Yeah, I was thinking the same – if there’s nothing else posted after returning from TESOL, I give up. Posting 3 Instructor: The main feeling I get, just to be frank, from the overall interaction in the group this semester, and especially on CMC discussions, is that of most everyone taking the path of least resistance most of the time… Posting 4 Tom: I felt like giving up when I got back from TESOL because the silence in the WebCT felt to me like active resistance to the process. I just felt that coerced coconstruction is no co-construction at all. Posting 5 Emily: The situation in our class in getting from pleasant to very NEGATIVE Tom and Instructor are getting frustrated whereas I don’t feel that way at all … I certainly am not rebelling … I guess I sound irritated, but I’m not that irritated, I just think we could have done this faster and in one shot in class, unless we had so many other things planned for in class that we had to co-construct out of class. I hope I or anybody else doesn’t resort to being this confrontational again – it is unacceptable, computer-mediated or not. Posting 6 Emily: I find it fascinating how differently people perceive this class. And Tom, if you were that frustrated, you could have also sent me an email and told me to get my act together and respond on the WebCT. Don’t assume that I’m rebelling. I would have done so gladly. I honestly misunderstood the class agenda. I’m sorry. Posting 7 Tom: Well ... I said it felt like you were resisting – an unfair assumption based on a misunderstanding – I accept that. But that is what it felt like. I didn’t send an email because it hardly seems my place to do so and as I say – having to ask people to contributes defeats the purpose pretty much. Posting 8 Jane: Although this all sounds negative, it is not a reflection on anyone. I like and respect everyone involved in this class. Everyone has made great contributions – I just wish there was more of that! Posting 9 Instructor: I’m in fact right now feeling better about some aspects of our class than I have all semester. At least there’s some stuff happening. Posting 10 Jane: HEY EVERYONE! I don't think this is so hard – we just have to get to it. We need to co-construct our final assessment activity and we have a good idea, but all we’ve done so far is talk around it and not get into the meat of it. So here goes: Posting 1

Interaction analysis and discussion of class 2 posting The second data example (Example 2) is taken from postings at around week 12 of the semester in the second class. It is interesting to note in Figure 2 that prior to these postings, the number of postings had fallen to almost none for a number of weeks. This cycle is broken by the announcements from Tom and Jane in postings 1 and 2 that they are “giving

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up” trying to collaborate with their fellow students and that they feel their time will be better spent working individually on their own projects. A clear sense of frustration is evident in these postings. The frustration triggers a response from the instructor (posting 3) who is also clearly frustrated by the lack of activity and progress within the group. The instructor expresses frustration with the thought that perhaps the students are only “taking the path of least resistance most of the time….” This suggestion brings further response from Tom (posting 4) and then a more heated response from Emily (posting 5), who feels that the tone of the class discussion is becoming “unacceptable.” More discussion and analysis follow until it seems at one point in the postings that the class may have collectively experienced a serious breakdown in communication and collaboration. A complexity theory perspective suggests that the group experienced a shift away from equilibrium within the system. The lack of activity and perceived resistance to the project generated energy within the system that rapidly transformed into a strain on the class dynamics as the shift away from equilibrium and balance continued. The confusion can be seen as a move toward the turbulent edge of chaos where there is a real possibility that the system will break down. This breakdown could manifest itself as a falling out between class members and a refusal to participate in the class project, for example. It is interesting to note, however, that the system, in a sense, self-corrects and re-organizes itself. This re-establishment of the system can be seen in Jane’s final message in posting 10, where she calls on her classmates to renew their efforts at collaborative enterprise. Indeed, Jane’s post can be seen as a transition and restructuring of the class dynamic, given that, following this interaction, the activity within the system appears at its most intense level, is sustained for the rest of the 16-week semester, and culminates in successful completion of the term project. The system was indeed sensitive to feedback from the environment, and the turbulence experienced might be considered a necessary phase for achieving the requisite level of interaction for success in truly co-operative and collaborative learning in this class. In a sense then, the movement and dynamism that shift the system between stability and chaos, provide the very space for creativity and growth in terms of, in these brief examples, learning and interpersonal relations. As Leather (2002) suggested, “This area of equipoise between stability and instability is where creative reorganization is evinced” (p. 60). This example highlights what Thorne (2003) described as “emergent interpersonal dynamics” (p. 1). It demonstrates that learning to learn in an unfamiliar paradigm requires students to renegotiate participation structures through ways of interacting, negotiating, and collaborating.



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Further implications and conclusion It must be recognized that the data samples here are small and taken from specialized classroom situations. Graduate students in small seminar settings may not offer a good example for what typically happens in general educational practice. Similarly, the classes here contained native speakers and very high-level nonnative speakers who are in graduate programs in the United States, and are not therefore a typical student population. Given these limitations, however, I believe these examples offer insight to how a computer network-based approach can complement and improve classroom instruction, while supporting the avowed pedagogical approach of an instructor. An important focus of SLA research has been the extent to which CMC creates more favorable participation opportunities for students compared with traditional classroom settings. There is interest in the role of CMC as a possible “equalizer” in participation (Hansen 2005: 10) that allows for greater interaction by less active students and changes the traditional teacher-dominated discussion structure (Honeycutt 2001). Warschauer (1996), for a further example, offered the hope “that electronic discussion may create opportunities for more equal participation in the classroom” (p. 22). This additional space for discussion means that all students, and especially underrepresented or less active students, are given further opportunity to interact and learn. There is evidence in these small samples that the role of the teacher in these CMC discussions is one of equal participant and that the technology affords students the opportunity to determine the course of the discussion. For example, in the case in class 1, posting 2, we see Lena taking responsibility to explore an issue from something that has arisen in the classroom discussion. This acceptance of responsibility leads to a significant, student-lead interaction involving the class and finally the instructor. Other studies (e.g. Kern 1995; Liu & Sadler 2003) on peer review work with second language writers, for example, have suggested that a hybrid use of face-to-face and CMC communication may provide the most effective learning environment. This suggestion is partly supported by the findings of the present study in that ideas arising from the face-to-face interaction are later taken up and discussed in detail in the asynchronous mode. It is critical to understand how the relationship between classroom interaction and CMC functions and how these two learning environments can complement and support each. These questions should be the subject of further research in CMC use in teaching practice. These two examples also suggest that an online computer-mediated discussion board can harness the energies and engagement of learners in meaningful and constructive ways. The two small examples show us that capturing such energy can create a dynamic, complex system that will evolve organically over time

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and can deepen the learning experience and sense of community for a class. As instructors and learners, we have all experienced a class situation where once the lesson has ended, the energy created within the class time dissipates when books are being placed into bags and students head for the door. The high level of interaction and instances of collaborative learning evidenced in the discussion postings for these two classes suggest that using CMC as a learning tool can effectively challenge such a way of being. However, as Hansen (2005) warned, CMC cannot be seen as an all-powerful mode of communication that will, in and of itself, lead to more powerful learning outcomes. Indeed, one of the perhaps contradictory findings of the small samples provided here (see also Wildner-Bassett 2002) is that students may well resist CMC participation and the extra work and commitment that collaboration of this nature can entail. By looking longitudinally at interaction patterns over a semester, it is possible to see that investment and activity within the system are not always evident and, therefore, that the online environment cannot be said to be functioning effectively throughout the semester. Indeed, as Figure 1 shows, the students did not make extensive use of the online discussion board between weeks 4 and 12. This reduced usage is eventually reflected in the apparent frustration of some of the class members and the instructor (Example 2, postings 5 and 7). A complexity theory perspective allows us to see these ebbs and flows as a natural progression within a learning system – which includes the possibility that the system may simply lose energy and die out. The theory suggests that the system requires energy, in the form of attention and effort from the instructor and students, if it is to develop and allow the benefits of further dialogic interaction to be realized. The notion of the strange attractors (see Table 1) within the theory suggests that the path taken by a class will necessarily be unique and unpredictable – given the different initial conditions that form any classroom ecology. This insight provides further support for the notion that CMC technology cannot simply be employed without due care and consideration for pedagogical practice. The data described here also support the claim from within a dynamic systems theory perspective that the learning process is not a linear transmission of knowledge from an expert to a novice. As Mercer (1995) helpfully reminded us, “The essence of human knowledge and understanding is that it is shared … [and it] is rarely, if ever, a matter of simply pooling information … knowledge and understanding are only generated by working with information, selecting from it, organizing it, arguing for its relevance” (p. 67). The postings in the example from class 1 (Example 1) exemplify this notion of self-selection and organizing to create knowledge, which relates to the idea of learners selecting from, and therefore also co-creating, a learning ecology, as suggested by van Lier (2004). The unpredictable nature of the learning experiences seen in these examples points



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to the nonlinear, dynamic system: large restructuring can be triggered or caused by the smallest of interactions or interventions within the system. Learning, then, can be usefully characterized as a process and not simply an end product, or as Gleick put it: “… of becoming rather than being” (p. 5). The examples offer evidence of van Lier’s (2004) observation that teaching does not cause learning, at least not in the lockstep, linear ways suggested by the notions of input and output and resulting approaches to language teaching. This statement may seem counterintuitive, but it allows for teachers to stop trying to force learners to learn, and instead to concentrate on providing the basis for meaningful activity and affordance within a rich learning environment. It also speaks to the experience of many educators who, in conversation about their work, express frustration when students just aren’t “getting it” and likewise joy for those unexpected and perhaps unplanned for “A-ha!” moments that learners experience from time to time. This particular approach allows us to make sense of such everyday phenomena in our classrooms. Similarly, resistance and turbulence within a class system can supply positive energy for change and ought to be embraced (so long as they do not descend into flaming or abuse) rather than suppressed by educators. The differences between positive and negative energy within the system is also something that must be monitored. When embraced in a constructive way, such resistance, as we have seen in this study, can lead to creativity and enhanced possibilities for learning. The concluding point of this chapter is therefore perhaps best expressed by Lantolf and Genung (2002): Proponents of these theories suggest that effective learning and motivation are always socially embedded…. As will become clear, ineffective learning is also socially embedded. It is not embedding that makes learning effective; it is the quality of the social framework and the activity carried out within that framework that determine learning outcomes.  (p. 176)

The data in this study suggests that CMC is one way of potentially providing the quality social learning framework within which learners can carry out meaningful and effective learning activity. Evidence to support this claim is seen in the engagement and participation by students in the study, that is, I would argue, reflected in their online postings. At times the postings cited became very personal and there was evidence of tension, friction, and turbulence, all of which suggests involvement and investment on behalf of the students. In conclusion, the theoretical lens of dynamic systems allows us to understand the CMC data in ways that might not have been possible within other theoretical frameworks. Specifically, the theory suggests the value of looking at particular classroom communication as part of a whole system of interactions. Periods of inactivity followed by sudden bursts of creativity no longer seem anomalous, and

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seemingly innocuous questions that produce detailed discussion and feedback can be understood as integral parts of a functioning system. In considering the different and complex elements that can affect and influence learners and learning outcomes “in relational terms” (Larsen-Freeman 2002: 44), while participants engage in real world contexts, we gain a fresh perspective on the potential for computer networks to enhance and complement the goals of classroom teaching.

Acknowledgements I would like to gratefully acknowledge Mary Wildner-Basset for her teaching and work with the COHLab project at the University of Arizona. I also offer my thanks to Kara McBride for help organizing the data for this project. Thanks also to Elizabeth Specker and Paul Lyddon for instructive feedback and comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks to Diane Larsen-Freeman for her pioneering work with complexity theory in applied linguistics, and her teaching at Penn State Summer Institute in Applied Linguistics, 2005.

References Agar, M. (2005, June 29th). Languaculture strudel: A nonlinear blend of complexity, ethnography and linguistics. Plenary Address at Penn State Summer Institute of Applied Linguistics. Bates, E. & Thelen, E. (2003). Connectionism and dynamic systems: Are they really different? Development Science, 6(4), 378–391. Briggs, J. (1992). Fractals: The patterns of chaos. New York, NY: Schuster and Schuster. Cameron, L. (2003). Metaphor in educational discourse. London: Continuum. Garson, J. W. (1998). Chaotic emergence and the language of thought. Philosophical Psychology, 11(3), 303–315. Gee, J. P. (2000). New people in new worlds: Networks, the new capitalism and schools. In B. Cope & M. Kalantziz (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social future. London: Routledge. Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York, NY: Viking-Penguin. Hansen, J. G. (2005). 1 STETS Language & Communication Review, 4(1), 9–14. Hill, K. A. (2003). Quantum linguistics: A response to David Mallows. ELT Journal, 57 (2), 175–178. Honeycutt, L. (2001). Comparing e-mail and synchronous conferencing in online peer response. Written communication, 18(1), 26–60. Kern, R. G. (1995). Restructuring classroom interaction with networked computers: Effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. The Modern Language Journal, 79, 457–476. Kramsch, C. (Ed.). (2002). Language acquisition and language socialization. Ecological perspectives. London: Continuum.



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Lantolf, J. & Genung, P. B. (2002). “I’d rather switch than fight”: An activity-theoretic study of power, success, and failure in the foreign language classroom. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 175–196). London: Continuum. Lantolf, J. & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. Oxford: OUP. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997a). Chaos/complexity science and second language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 18, 141–165. Larsen-Freeman, D. (1997b). An attitude of inquiry: An interview with Diane Larsen-Freeman. Language Teacher [Online Newsletter]. Retrieved June 19 2005, from http://www.jalt- publications.org/tlt/files/97/jul/inquiry.html Larsen-Freeman, D. (2002). Language acquisition and language use from a chaos/complexity theory perspective. In Kramsch, C. (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization (pp. 31–46). London: Continuum. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2003). Teaching language: From grammar to grammaring. Boston, MA: Heinle. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: CUP. Leather, J. (2002). Modeling the acquisition of speech in a “multilingual” society: An ecological approach. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization (pp. 47–67). London: Continuum. Leather, J. & van Dam, J. (2002). Ecology of language acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Liu, J. & Sadler, R. W. (2003). The effects and affect of peer review in electronic versus traditional modes on L2 writing. English for Academic Purposes, 2. Mallows, D. (2002). Non-linearity and the observed lesson. ELT Journal, 56(1), 3–10. McBride, K. (2005). The COHLab website. Retrieved August 10 2005, from http://www.coh. arizona.edu/codi/ Mercer, N. (1995). The guided construction of knowledge: Talk amongst teachers and learners. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Siegal, A. (1996). The role of learner subjectivity in second language sociolinguistic competency: Western women learning Japanese. Applied Linguistics, 17(3), 56–82. Thorne, S. L. (2003). Artifacts and cultures of use in intercultural communication. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 38–67. Thorne, S. L. & Payne, J. S. (2005). Evolutionary trajectories, Internet mediated expression, and language education. CALICO Journal, 22(3), 371–397. van Lier, L. (2000). From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from an ecological perspective. In J. P. Lantolf (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 245–259). Oxford: OUP. van Lier, L. (2002). An ecological-semiotic perspective on language and linguistics. In C. Kramsch (Ed.), Language acquisition and language socialization: Ecological perspectives (pp. 140–164). London: Continuum. van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning: A sociocultural perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Waldrop, M. M. (1992). Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

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Warschauer, M. (1996). Comparing face-to-face and electronic discussion in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal, 13(2), 7–26. Warschauer, M. & Kern, R. (Eds.). (2000). Network-based language teaching: Concepts and practice. Cambridge: CUP. Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (2004). Mind, language, and epistemology: Toward a language socialization paradigm for SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 88, 331–350. Wildner-Bassett, M. (2002). Planet Xeno: Creating a collaborative computer-mediated communication culture. In P. Comeaux (Ed.), Communication and collaboration. in the online classroom: Examples and applications (pp. 157–174). Bolton, MA: Anker. Wildner-Bassett, M. (2004). General rationale for the class SLAT 696d. Internal Memo. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona. Wildner-Bassett, M. (2005). Ecological perspectives on CMC, paradigm shifts and language pedagogy. Paper presented at the SLAT Colloquium. University of Arizona, Tucson. SLAT Colloquium Series.

Interpersonal and intercultural understanding in a blended second culture classroom Kara McBride and Mary E. Wildner-Bassett Saint Louis University / University of Arizona

A critical stance toward one’s own views as well as the ability to take on the perspective of others is required for intercultural and interpersonal understanding. This chapter presents a study from an undergraduate course used to fulfill a requirement in the category of gender, race, class, ethnicity, or non-Western area studies. A critical social-constructivist approach to pedagogy shaped this course, entitled Dialogue of the Sexes: Women and Men in German-speaking Societies. This study focused on the ways that meaning is made in computermediated and face-to-face (FTF) discussions. Through the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from the course, it demonstrates that a blended class format involving both FTF discussion and threaded, asynchronous computermediated communication (CMC) can promote the kind of sociality, criticality, and co-construction that lead to important shifts of perspective.

This chapter describes how one course used a blended format – blended between face-to-face (FTF) classroom encounters and computer-mediated communication (CMC) – to develop intercultural understanding in students through a critical social-constructivist (CS-C) approach to language and culture pedagogy. The course was called Dialogue of the Sexes: Women and Men in German-speaking Societies. It was one of the classes offered to undergraduate students at our university to fulfill their requirement to take a course from the category of Gender, Race, Class, Ethnicity, or Non-Western Area Studies within what is called the General Education curriculum. These courses are conceived of in this way:

. The term hybrid is more commonly used in the United States to describe this kind of class format, but we have chosen the European term blended to emphasize the fact that activities in this class ran from one format to another.

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General education is designed to accomplish several goals … Taken together, the experiences of general education encourage the student to develop a critical and inquiring attitude, an appreciation of complexity and ambiguity, a tolerance for and empathy with persons of different backgrounds or values and a deepened sense of self.

These goals mesh very well with Byram’s (1997) conception of teaching intercultural communicative competence, which emphasizes that, “There ... needs to be a willingness to suspend belief in one’s own meanings and behaviors, and to analyze them from the viewpoint of others with whom one is engaging” (p. 34). To be able to stand back from one’s beliefs and actions and view them from another point of view requires criticality, and it also leads to a greater understanding of the self. “An appreciation for complexity and ambiguity,” to quote from the course description above, is required for deeper understandings of culture, the self, and the other. Identities are not constant. Humans are defined by their social relations to others and by their culture, and these things are in constant flux. In order to understand fully this dynamic, one needs to live it, and be critically aware of living it. There is no simple way to hand this knowledge over to students. This kind of understanding, however, can grow out of discussion. One proposal for this type of learning has been offered by Brookfield and Preskill (2005) in a book entitled Discussion as a Way of Teaching. Even though their book is not applied to second or foreign language or culture learning, they offer important ideas about making discussions critical – a key aspect of the approach we took in the class that is used as an example and data source here. As Brookfield and Preskill describe it, When participants [in discussion] take a critical stance, they are committed to questioning and exploring even the most widely accepted ideas and beliefs. … One of the defining characteristics of critical discussion is that participants are willing to enter the conversation with open minds. This requires people to be flexible enough to adjust their views in the light of persuasive, well-supported arguments and confident enough to retain their original opinions when rebuttals fall short.  (p. 7)

This approach to learning functions very well within a CS-C framework, in which learning is considered an act of re-creation on the part of each learner embedded in a particular social context. Through qualitative and quantitative analyses of data collected in a class based on CS-C approaches to pedagogy and focusing on the ways that meaning is made . http://catalog.arizona.edu/policies/974/genedure.htm. This website describes the goals and general course objectives of the general education course structure for the entire university.



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in discussions using a blended format of CMC and FTF modalities, we seek in this chapter to answer the following general research questions: What impact did the CS-C pedagogy and the use of discussion as way of teaching/learning have on the students in the class? How did the use of a blended model of CMC and FTF discussion influence the students and the objectives of the class? Did CMC serve to enhance the class and its proposed aims, or did it have a negative or a negligible impact on them?

Critical social-constructivism What informs the conceptualization of learning that guided the events described in this chapter are our readings of CS-C theories, which emphasize a critical approach to social interactions and to discussion for learning, where interpersonal relations and the influence of these activities on learning become evident. This notion of a critical approach, as Luke (2004) has explicated it, … entails an epistemological Othering and ‘doubling’ of the world – a sense of being beside oneself or outside of oneself in another epistemological, discourse, and political space than one typically would inhabit. … [It is] the out-of-body experience of watching oneself watch oneself as an object of power and naming oneself as such. (pp. 26–28)

Our use of the ideas and our applications of these theories make possible the outof-body experience of watching ourselves (both learners and teachers) performing acts of power and mediating them through discussion as they emerge in the learning ecology of the CMC-FTF classroom. When we write about the learning ecology of our classroom, we emphasize, as does Dimitrov (2002), … learning as essentially holistic – not only the human mind – reason, logic, ability to think and decide – is the most important agent in this process. Equally important are also the human heart – feelings, emotions, ability to love and care – and the human soul – intuition, inspiration, ability to aspire and meditate. The heart and soul factors are vital for any manifestation of human creativity, and without creativity learning is a mere repetition of knowledge borrowed from books and gurus. (pp. 386–387)

It is within the complexities of these aspects of learning that students and instructors develop voice and identity. Voice and identity, though, are not themselves simple, clear, or monolithic concepts in any way. One definition of voice(s) helps explicate the complexity of the phenomenon: “Voices can mean the same as ‘ideas and opinions,’ but has

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another meaning …: voices in the sense of ways with words, accents, grammatical, lexical and broader discoursal choices, feeling ‘at home’ in particular genres and discourses” (Ivanič 1998: 183). Writing, either formally or in a CMC context, always conveys a representation of the self of the writer. These representations of self are most prevalent in process writing where the writing is dialogic or discussion-oriented, and where the learners have an opportunity to develop an understanding of the way that readers appreciate and respond to their writing. In our applications of these ideas, this opportunity occurs in both the CMC discussions as well as in the FTF classroom discussions, which expand on and extend the topics and exchanges in the CMC discussions. In this way, then, our model supports processes which lead to a multiplicity of ways for learners to become aware of voice and express identity. As Vollmer (2002) has summarized, “… students increase their control over written discourse when they become aware of the interpretive contexts for their texts and develop a metalanguage from which to analyze these contexts.” Ivanič and Camps (2001) also maintain that critical awareness offers writers/learners the means to “maintain control over the personal and cultural identity they are projecting in their writing” (p. 31). This stance then explains the “critical” part of our teaching model’s name. The “social-constructivism” part of CS-C is the belief that learning is not the transfer of immutable facts from teacher to student. Instead, the nature of knowledge requires that learning take place as a re-creation of the knowledge in the learner’s mind, a process residing in social contact embedded in a particular context. Truth is a matter of human perception which is shaped by social relations and conventions. Because learning always happens as an act of re-creation in the learner’s mind, education is best served by recognizing this process of learning as opposed to fighting it. Brookfield and Preskill (2005) explain how learning occurs in this way, even in the “hard” sciences, where facts are easier to delineate. Whatever the nature of the field of study, learning is always a matter of negotiation with the human mind. Learning in areas of study like culture, where the subject matter defines itself through change and multiplicity, is particularly impoverished and even nonsensical when an attempt is made to broach the subject without the dialogical. As was pointed out so clearly in an article by Schulz, LaLande II, et al. (2005), there is a lack of professional consensus regarding appropriate definitions of culture for classroom instruction, common objectives and instructional content, as well as appropriate assessment in the area of cultural knowledge and awareness. Exploration of these issues must continue, both among the professionals of our field, and with the learners in our classrooms. The critical-social constructivist perspective that is an essential aspect of our pedagogy allows written discussions



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in CMC to become one important way to explore social identity, which Harklau (1999) terms “cultural inquiry through writing” (p. 125).

Sociality and co-construction Two final aspects of the critical-social perspective that apply to both the class and our investigation of its results are the ideas of sociality and co-construction. In its simplest definition, sociality is a tendency to associate with others and form social groups. In the ecology of learning that we investigate here and the pedagogical applications of the ideas presented above, participation and related sociality are key elements. As Lankshear and Knobel (2006) have discussed, Participation means involvement in some kind of shared purpose or activity – taking part in some kind of endeavour in which others are involved. The kinds of activities one might participate in may be things that are already more or less established, with more or less recognised norms and criteria. Alternatively, they might be things that are evolving and being developed, such that one’s participation becomes part of building a practice or an affinity or community that may continue to evolve. (p. 4)

From this understanding of participation as sociality, the concept of co-construction of ideas in the learning ecology of the blended CMC-FTF classroom emerges. Co-construction and meaning making occur when people exchange their ideas on a specific topic, collaboratively creating new knowledge, a tangible product, or a common understanding of a concept, and re-acculturating this knowledge into their own belief and knowledge systems. Obviously, participation and sociality are required for this kind of knowledge creation through co-construction. In order for sociality to develop naturally in the blended classroom ecology that we encouraged, we needed to develop ground rules for congenial and collaborative interaction on the discussion boards of the courseware and in the FTF contexts of the classroom. Brookfield and Peskill (2005) discuss the importance of co-constructing ground rules for discussions in class. Experience in our classrooms has shown us that time spent co-constructing basic guidelines for decent and congenial contributions, rather than hierarchical or exclusionary contribu. Discussed in more detail in Wildner-Bassett (2002) and its associated website, http://www. coh.arizona.edu/planet-xeno/coconstruction.html . This is the general course management software package supported by our university, called Desire 2 Learn. It is most commonly known as D2L. The preposition never occurs, even in the full name.

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tions, or even flaming, is time well spent. Some of the materials used in this class to initiate these discussions are included in Appendix C. Our experience with this class was that even though some students expressed mild hostility at the beginning of the class (e.g., adding “b.s.” in the subject line to describe an assignment), this behavior very quickly yielded to the indirect peer pressure of no response in kind from other students. The students established a serious but friendly tone, where politeness, mutual support, and inclusiveness were the implied ground rules for interaction. Data to support this point is included below in a further discussion.

Blended learning Our class used a blended format in order to encourage sociality and critical awareness. It was believed that sociality could best be encouraged through FTF contact, while CMC, in the form of a threaded electronic discussion, would be an ideal writing environment where students could take their time to produce well thought-out responses with a heightened awareness of audience. If we could create a class environment that encouraged sociality, critical discussion and a coconstruction of ideas, then conditions would be right for the participants to come to new understandings of their own and others’ perspectives. We are not the first researchers to have aimed for students to view their own and others’ perspectives in a new light, and reports on encouraging this shift in students and their teachers are numerous in the literature. Furstenberg, Levet, English, and Maillet (2001) created an online site called CULTURA, whose primary objective was to help students see the world with “other eyes.” Their project gets students to work in tandem with other students who live where their target language is spoken, and together they investigate differences that are often subtle or difficult to pinpoint between two cultures. Other intercultural exchanges accomplished through tandem learning have also been specifically crafted to get the students to take a step back from their own cultural beliefs in order to get a more critical view of them. This more distanced view is considered necessary for coming to understand the point of view of someone from another culture (Belz 2002; Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003; Müller-Hartmann 2000; O’Dowd 2003). Although some of these projects have reported finding the desired results (e.g., Furstenberg et al. 2001; von der Emde, Schneider, & Kötter 2001), height. See Abrams (2003) for a discussion of CMC and flaming, which can be defined as posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting, usually in the social context of a discussion board, as in our classroom context.



Interpersonal and intercultural understanding

ened intercultural understanding is far from an automatic outcome of cross-cultural online discourse (Kern, Ware, & Warschauer 2004). Many researchers have reported difficulties in these efforts, which resulted in frustration (Belz 2000; Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003), miscommunication (Ware 2005; Ware & Kramsch 2005), or deepened negative stereotypes on the part of the students involved (Meagher & Castaños 1996). Reasons cited for these problems include unequal levels of technological or linguistic competence between the two groups of students (Belz 2002); differences in university schedules and student motivations (Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003; Kramsch & Thorne 2002); and issues of interpersonal communication and Internet pragmatics (Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003; O’Dowd 2003; Ware & Kramsch 2005). This last factor is particularly important. In a situation of intercultural education, students are already grappling with trying to understand the point of view of an other and with perspectives that differ from their own. When this effort is mediated through online communication, the possibility for misunderstanding is multiplied because most forms of online communication used in language and culture classes, such as email and MOOs, are only text based. Tone of voice and body language add a tremendous amount of information to a message, and messages that are stripped of these features can easily be misinterpreted (Walther 1996). The blended nature of the course described here allowed students to interact online and take advantage of what online communication has to offer – fewer chances of loss of face (Ware 2005), an opportunity for increased participation on the part of every class member (Kelm 1992; Kern 1995; Warschauer 1996), and an increase in the students’, as opposed to the teacher’s, role (Beauvois 1998; Kern 1995) – while also allowing ample time for FTF contact with their interlocutors so that the gaps left by online communication could be filled during live interaction. Another characteristic of this class that sets it apart from the recently referred to culture classes is that, while a foreign (German-speaking) culture was the focus of the course content, the students communicated with other students at their own university instead of students in another country. Students in this course explored new perspectives on their own lives and the similarities and differences between their life experiences and those of the people in the room with them, while at the same time discussing texts about people from the German-speaking world. In this way, the students could learn by analogy. They started with interpersonal comparisons that were smaller leaps: seeing ways in which they had much in common with classmates they might have otherwise considered very different, while at the same time gaining new perspectives (largely through classmates’ reactions to their own work) on themselves and their own lives. This understanding was then used as a bridge to bring about an analogous understanding of the lives and perspectives of people in the German-speaking societies that were the

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focus of the course’s content. This chapter shows how this process, with online communication as an essential element, was able to “... help students enter into a new realm of collaborative inquiry and construction of knowledge, relaying their expanding repertoire of identities and communications strategies as resources in the process” (Kern et al. 2004: 254).

Data Both qualitative and quantitative data were used for this project. The qualitative data include all written products made by the students for the course, such as the writing assignments and the discussions on the electronic, threaded discussion board on the course management system Desire 2 Learn (D2L; described below). The quantitative data comes from a survey that was administered near the end of the semester. Of the total 22 students enrolled, 18 took the survey, knowing that the teacher would not see the results until after the grades were turned in, and that they could answer the survey anonymously if they wished. In order to triangulate the qualitative data and to have a way to check our interpretation of them, we wanted to ask direct questions to the students about the ways in which the blended learning environment of the course affected them. The items on this survey were created by adapting Moos’ (1987) conceptual framework of social environment and the New Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (Taylor, Fraser, & Fisher 1997). The survey can be seen in Appendices A and B, along with the results, which are also interwoven into the discussions of the quantitative data.

The participants The students The students who took part in this ecology of learning had enrolled in a class to satisfy their general studies requirements, as described at the outset of this discussion. They were a mixture of undergraduates at different points in their studies: beginning (freshmen), midway (sophomores or juniors), or finishing (seniors). Their age range was 18–23. The majority of the class was American citizens, but there were two international students as well. Of the 22 students who finished the class, 4 students were nonnative speakers of English, but only 1 of those 4 seemed to have slightly less than fully fluent and accurate English usage. Their exposure to the cultures and language of German-speaking countries before the class was



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minimal. Only 1 of the students was studying toward a minor in German Studies, and she was 1 of 2 students who had rudimentary skills in German language use. The class was taught in English, and all the readings were in English, but a few German words occurred in the readings, and three films/documentaries in German with English subtitles were shown during the semester. There was a generally quiet atmosphere in the class at the beginning, but as students got to know each other better and feel integrated into the learning ecology, they gradually began to contribute more easily and openly in the FTF sessions.

The teacher and her role in the class The instructor for this class was a full professor in the Department of German Studies. She is known among colleagues, students, and personal friends as having something of a “mom” personality, both as someone a person can go to for assurance and advice, as well as prone to expressing sentiments that seem to exemplify maternal concern. Her speaking style is authoritative, punctuated frequently with a lowered chin and furrowed brow during moments of silence as she gauges whether her students have any confusions that they need to discuss. She practices this stance frequently because her typical teaching practice is to present to her students complexities with which they are expected to engage dialogically, as the examples in later sections illustrate. The teacher never lectured in class but did give extended answers extemporaneously to questions that came up in class. The primary way in which the instructor’s point of view was present was through the questions that she posed for the students to discuss with each other, and through the material which she had selected for class. The instructor never participated in the online discussions, although the students knew that she was reading them. Her feedback tended to be brief. When grading, she filled in numbers in a grading rubric, thus communicating to what extent she believed that the student had completed the stated objectives, and she added summarizing comments, such as, Donna, I very much enjoyed reading your autobio. I’m sorry for your loss of your father at such at early age, but your reflections about what it has meant to you are eloquent. I would have liked to have read a little more about your reflections on Others and on the cultural or gender implications. This is a very good job, though!

. A pseudonym.

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Despite what could sound like a low level of activity in the course, if one were to interpret the facts in light of typical teacher behavior in traditional classes, the instructor’s involvement and personality came through to the students, and in a positive way. The three questions on the survey that asked the students their impressions of the teacher – whether she cared about their interests (19a), whether she was fun (22a) and whether they felt that they could trust her (28a) – all received 100% responses of either agree or strongly agree.

The class The students met twice a week for a total of 3 contact hours per week. In one session per week, the class met in a regular classroom and engaged in FTF discussions of the topics in the syllabus, the readings, and the students’ projects, all of which focused on comparative and contrastive views of their personal and cultural identities in both their first language(s) and culture(s) and in the cultures and identities that are salient in present-day German-speaking countries. The second session of the week met in a computer lab that was designed specifically for collaborative teaching practices, and was conducted using a mixture of FTF conversation and asynchronous CMC. Throughout all sessions, participants were asked to see and construct themselves as learning and knowing subjects rather than to listen to lectures by a teacher. As subjects responsible to their peers, they brought their attitudes, positionalities, and perspectives into their own focus and consciousness (Quasthoff 1993; Rao 1993; Wildner-Bassett & Meerholz-Haerle 1999). The aim of all written and oral activities in all aspects of the class was to realize basic tenets of critical, feminist, and positional pedagogies which encouraged learners to “… situate themselves within the complex of linguistic, cultural, and value-laden practices in which they participate …” (Zuss 1994: 264). The written conversations resulting from these assignments10 show how the learners see and

. These numbers refer to the questions in the questionnaires included in Appendices A and B. . The computer screens are embedded into the tables so that it is easy to see over them and instead see one’s classmates and the instructor. The chairs are rolling office chairs so that reconfiguration of the seating arrangement is easy. The basic seating arrangement is in three “pods” of eight computers in a circle, so students face each other rather than the teacher’s desk. . See also Brookfield and Preskill (2005: 156–157) for a similar discussion. 10. The full syllabus of the course, including a more detailed description of written discussion assignments, is included in Appendix C.



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construct themselves as learning and knowing subjects. Excerpts from their conversations are explored below. The students’ first assignment was to write an “Intellectual and Cultural Autobiography,” which went through three rounds of peer review before a final draft was due. The assignment was described to the students as a request for them to define how they see the world and what had shaped that viewpoint for them.11 It is important to note here that Brookfield and Preskill (2005) also suggest “…giving students opportunities to talk and write autobiographically …” to encourage a “… mutual receptivity to new ideas and perspectives ….” (p. 9). The semester’s further assignments and activities revolved around this essential first assignment. In this way, participants defined and co-constructed approximately 60% of the content of the course – readings and other source materials (websites, films, documentaries) served as the other 40%. As the semester continued, there were two more assignments that were closely related to and built on the first, namely one researched and one interview profile of women or other others in German-speaking societies. The final assignment was a paper that required students to make connections among all of the writings and profiles they had accomplished during the semester and how those connections related to the overall goals of the class. With this final assessment opportunity, the learners were invited once again to reflect on the connections they could make among the ways of knowing and being that they had co-constructed throughout the semester.

The online component The course management software, Desire 2 Learn (D2L), that is used and supported at the university where this course took place, is very flexible. Not all of the options that are available in a D2L course space were used for this class. When a user logged onto the course, he or she saw “News Items.” This space was used to post class reminders, such as when an assignment was due. On the top menu bar, there were links to all of the major parts of the website. These were: “Learning Activities,” “Discussions,” “Links,” and “Dropbox.” Like most pages on D2L, the “Learning Activities” page had an outline format. Topics were listed, and under them, subtopics, which were clickable links. One topic on this page was “Weekly Schedule of Activities.” Below it were one-line descriptions of the weekly activities. Clicking on one of these activities took the

11. See the syllabus in Appendix C for the entire description.

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user to another page which had a description of what exactly the students were supposed to do for that activity. Another major topic on the “Learning Activities” page was “Quizzes and Preparation.” Each link below that topic led to explanations of what would be on the quizzes and how to prepare for them. Other material found in “Learning Activities” included grading rubrics and detailed explanations of the procedures students were expected to follow. The most heavily trafficked part of the course website was “Discussions.” This section contained one area for each of the discussions that the students participated in. These were threaded discussion boards, where each contribution was identified by a subject line and by the name of the author, as well as the time of posting. It was possible to attach documents to each posting. Just like with email, participants could reply to messages, and the reply was grouped under the original message where it was indented in the master list. In this way, threads of discussion were identified. The “Dropbox” was where students went to turn in final copies of some of their assignments. Specific folders were set up for each assignment. These folders had due dates attached to them, after which point the student could no longer submit an assignment. The instructor returned assignments with comments on them, either in an attached Word document or separately, in a D2L window that was specifically for that purpose.

Student perception of D2L use Students appreciated the use of CMC in the class. On Item 2a of the survey, 17 out of 18 students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I would like to see some of the ways we used computers in this class used in other classes.” Of the 18 students, 13 said that it was clear to them why computers were used in the class (Item 12a). From the survey items where students responded with frequency measures as opposed to agree or disagree, only 1 student said that it was never the case that working on the computer allowed the class to do things that would not otherwise have been possible, and 8 students said that that had been true many times (Item 17b). No students responded with never to the statement “Using computers added a kind of flexibility to the course that I appreciated” (Item 12b). Finally, other items on the survey showed that the students experienced very few difficulties in using the technology (Items 20b, 23b, and 30b).



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Intercultural understanding Students in this class felt that they had come to a better understanding of another culture as a result of their participation. In response to the survey item (15b) that said “I understood something about a culture that I did not understand before,” no one in the class disagreed, and 12 students indicated that it had happened to them many times. As a student wrote in her final reflection paper, “I have taken away a much more complete knowledge of a culture I was never previously interested in.” She went on to say that, in contrast to the majority of her college courses, what she learned in this course would stay with her through her whole life, adding, “I think that this semester has shown me a new and valuable approach to analyzing life.” This comment indicates that the students gained knowledge about the culture of study, which is one part of Byram’s (1997) model of what is needed in the development of intercultural understanding. Also necessary is a critical understanding of oneself and one’s own perspectives, as well as understanding the perspective of another. To the statement “I understood new perspectives and points of view because of this class” (Item 10b) and “Something in this class led me to understand someone else’s point of view better” (24b), only one person (a different one for the two items) answered with never. On the former (10b), 13 out of 18 students said this revealing moment had occurred for them many times. Students gained new perspectives by being able to relate to the lives of people from another culture. One student wrote, “The research paper at first scared me because I had no idea how I was going to find some one from a German speaking society to relate to” but he went on to say that he and his classmates were all able to do that. In order to gain new perspectives on others, the students had to understand their relation to others in the world. One wrote, I have learned a lot about myself and others during the research profile process. One important thing that I have learned about myself is that I really have an American view of the world. Since I have grown up in the United States during the late 20th and early 21st century, during which time the U.S. has played a dominant role in the world, I tend to see world events from an American perspective. It has really opened my eyes to other perspectives of the world and taught me to be more sensitive towards them.12

Similarly, the student who turned in his first few assignments in the class with “b.s.” as part of the title wrote at the end, 12. All quotes are direct quotes, lifted straight from the students’ written work. Errors found in the quotes were in the originals.

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I have also learned to be not so judgmental. Prior to this class I may have been some-what judgmental. Learning about various aspects of profiles has open windows to various cultures unbeknownst to me. I have greatly improved as a person as a result of this class and the D2L participation that came along with it.

Students were able to change their perspectives on others by relating to material about the German-speaking world and discussing it primarily with their peers. Before this semester, I never really thought too much about my life in connection to German-speaking cultures. I have learned that I have a connection to this culture just as I have some sort of connection to many other cultures. By learning about German culture through people, it is much easier to connect to rather than gathering this information from books. It is also much easier to connect to this information after discussing these topics with other people from my culture and age group.

By starting with a process of relating to others who were right there beside them, these students were able to bridge their understanding from the others in their class to the others elsewhere in the world. This bridge also worked in the opposite direction. By gaining greater perspective on aspects of German culture, students came to new understandings about their own society: “Finally, while reading the profiles about German immigrants my perspective on how immigrants are treated in the U.S. and abroad really changed.” Therefore, in this learning ecology, the goals of interpersonal growth, identity formation, expanding higher level thinking, and experiencing CS-C pedagogy were important aspects of the course. In addition, of course, the goal of intercultural understanding, with the target culture of the German-speaking societies in the 20th and 21st centuries, was a main focus of the class. Leading students to achieve these goals was accomplished through the various class assignments, as is evidenced in the following student’s description of her experience with interviewing someone from Germany:13

13. The writing assignments were these: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Researched profiles of women or other Others in German-speaking societies written by class members. Standpoint (intellectual and cultural) autobiographies of class members. Interview profiles of women or other Others in local societies written by class  members. Published profiles of women from the past and present in our reading and handouts. Written reflections on the connections among these pieces and the lives of class  participants.



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… when she agreed to help me with this interview, and all she could say was “finally, I get to talk about how great my life in Germany is, to someone who is actually interested!!” Much of the information that I got from Birgit very much mirrored the topics that have been discussed in the classroom regarding German society. Such things as the implied gender roles, schooling, and the historical aspects of German culture were discussed which acknowledged my previous familiarity from this course with the dialogue of the sexes in German society.

This student expresses well how the experiential phase of learning through a FTF interview interfaces and supports classroom CMC and CS-C of the learning ecology. All of these facets of class activity move through the complexities of personal identities and experiences to support the goals of both interpersonal and intercultural understanding in the blended second culture classroom.

Co-construction Through discussion, the students shaped each other’s perspectives and influenced the way that they wrote about issues later on in the course. For most assignments, the students had to post their responses to prompts from the teacher, and then they had to respond to a certain minimum number of their classmates’ postings. Sometimes the posting was done by individual students, but often it was done in groups of two or three. Within the group, the students discussed ideas and either came to a consensus or at least came to understand the other group members’ point of view. Several times small groups reported their answers by saying what each different student in their group thought, providing support for each idea. Other individuals or groups then responded in the threaded discussion to these postings.

In addition, the students wrote intensively in the CMC context, where the assignments were described this way: Dialogue journals, which will consist of 7–10 entries throughout the semester. These journal entries will be the result not only of one student's writing, but will be collections of discussions and process evaluation in the small groups and with partners. The dialogic learning portfolio will contain the above two sets of entries (drafts and written discussions), and it will also contain assignments which address particular topics. The assignments will be in the form of short, relatively formal written summaries and essays, and they will be based on interviews, comparative readings, etc. The process approach will be fully integrated by having portions of the discussion groups, as well as the electronic synchronous discussions, dedicated to the topics and content that will eventually be reflected in the written assignments.

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In almost every posting, the students praised the thoughts and writings of the classmates to whom they were responding, even when the message also included disagreement or a critique of the other person. When reviewing each other’s drafts of assignments, students were encouraged to use the Track Changes feature in Word. Either through that feature or in the discussion space proper, students typically encouraged each other to probe deeper into ideas. For example, when one student wrote in his autobiography that he learned not to be afraid of the real world, one of his peer editors wrote, “what type of situations helped you not to be afraid of the real world.” Another example is the following: The other comment was about the “personalness” of the paper. It seems like you just want to list off the absolute facts about yourself and I see no ambiguity or doubt in your analysis of the events in your life. It’s hard to understand why you are the way you are because you’re just telling us instead of explaining it. Again, I really like your writing style … just write more.

The student whose rough draft is described above reworked her autobiography to be an extremely honest work, where the voice she used to express her identity changed dramatically to talk about her feelings about being abandoned by her mother at the age of four and how she has continued on to become a very optimistic and strong person as a result of working through her broken heart. In all cases, peer reviews shaped and helped to make clearer later drafts of assignments. Students enjoyed influencing each other’s work. One student wrote about a second draft, “I really like how you listened to my suggestion and i think the changes that you made have greatly improved you paper. I really liked how you went into more details about your grandmothers death, and your sister being born. your life is very interesting.” There was less of an opportunity to see a chronicle of how peer comments affected students in the discussions, but sometimes they wrote directly about that effect. For example, one student early on into the semester wrote, “thanks for your criticism, it does help me reread what i wrote making sure to state my same idea more clearly.” Even when students were not told to change something about their writings, they were often inspired to by what they read from their peers. There were several comments such as, “very commendable to chose a broad belief in tolerance toward ‘others’ … i have to admit, my response seems superficial in comparison … kudos,” or “As for the importance in the other areas, such as #1 … you made me think about wanting to change some of my answers.” In a discussion about Austrian women during wartime, one group compared one of the stories for discussion with Rosa Parks’ act of resistance. Four different groups of students wrote back in the discussion that they had not thought of that connection but that upon reading it, they considered it very insightful: “Finally, the



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example at the end about Rosa Parks was one that we did not remember but brings up a good point about how civil rights relate to the situation.” In this way, students helped each other see new connections and co-created the content of the course. One group, responding to an article about differences in feminine and masculine styles of reasoning wrote: The idea of valuing an open structure over a closed structure is something that relates even to the structure of this class itself. The fact that we as student[s] are able to create the structure of this class through online discussion threads, brings this quote more close to home.

This last quote shows that the students themselves saw the class as an occasion of co-construction. The survey results support this perception. All but two students reported being able to see themselves and their classmates developing as students throughout the semester (Items 6b and 14b). The survey also supports the impression that the students valued each other’s contributions in class. Most students (11 out of 18) saw themselves as an important part of the class (Item 14a); all but one felt that their comments were truly understood by classmates (Item 9b); and they were interested in what their classmates had to say as well (Item 18b – 100% agreement).

Development of identity Out of 18 respondents to the survey, 17 students agreed with the statement, “This class helped me understand my own life experiences better” (Item 23a), and 12 of them agreed that they were clearer about who they were as a result of the class (27a). Items 18a, 20a, 31a, 3b, and 21b show that the students felt very comfortable in the class environment and free to be themselves. The class helped students understand themselves better, and the students’ final papers made it clear that they saw this development as a result of their interaction with others. Their writings included statements such as, “it was reading other peoples profiles that really made me learn about myself,” and “In the process of writing my own profiles and reading those of others my perspective of myself and others has been altered.” Elsewhere a student wrote: I’ve also realized that being more culturally, religiously, and socially sensitive and tolerant to those who hold the title as an “other” within our society and beyond, has actually deepened my sense of self, and made me feel more comfortable in my own skin, while feeling that others accepted me and my stories of “otherness” as defining what it means to be human.

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Another particularly good expression of this personal growth was the following: When I first signed up for this class I expected it to be like any other. Just a class where you learn simple facts about history and put them in to memory only for them to be lost shortly down the road. To my surprise this class brought something to the table that I had not expected. It taught me to look at others and help me diminish some stereotypes. In doing this is [should read “it”] also created a whole new look at something, myself. The activities we did in this class helped me take a look at my own life and relate it to situations that others deal with that may be similar or completely opposite from mine.

The survey results point to some important re-evaluations taking place in the students. More than half of the students overall reported one or more of the following: changes in career plans, political beliefs, views on spirituality, and their abilities as a listener (9a, 10a, 32a, and 4a, respectively). That is, over half of the students surveyed experienced a shift in themselves in at least one of those four areas.

Predispositions The items in the survey were a measure of the extent to which the course had served to encourage critical thinking and intercultural and interpersonal understanding, or the extent to which the survey takers appreciated and participated in the goals and structure of the class. To look at these notions, we did a quantitative analysis on survey responses. Each item of the survey had four possible answers, phrased either in terms of agreement or disagreement (survey items labeled with an a) or frequency of an occurrence (b items). A value was assigned to each answer, on a scale of 1 to 4, with a higher number indicating greater critical thinking, intercultural and interpersonal understanding, or satisfaction with the course. In this way we were able to rank the items, as well as find mean scores for each student. Higher mean scores reflected a greater appreciation of and engagement with the course. We found that for almost all items, there was a consistency of the ranking of the items. That is, items fell into the same relative rank order, from strongest to least agreement, across the board, both for the students with lower mean scores and higher mean scores alike. There were, however, three items for which the ranking of responses differed from this otherwise consistent trend. These were item 14a, “I play an important role in this class”; 13b, “Participating in this class made me feel smart”; and 28b, “Participating in this class made me feel creative.” The students with an overall less positive mean (bottom third) response gave very



Interpersonal and intercultural understanding

low scores for these items in particular, in contrast to the group of their classmates whose overall mean response was higher (top third). Because these three items were exceptions to the overall consistency of rank ordering, we examined the qualitative data from the autobiographies to look for a possible insight that might be related to this apparent inconsistency. In the autobiographies, we discovered that these students’ descriptions of their contexts and ecologies in early childhood differed dramatically from one another. The three students whose overall mean scores on the survey were highest, made the following observations about their childhoods: “I was fortunate enough to have been raised in an environment where I was taught that no dream was too big and was given the opportunities to achieve them”; “I feel fortunate to be able to ascertain these opportunities, dreams, goals, aspirations due to my loving, supportive family”; and “Growing up, I was blessed to have an amazing family.” In stark contrast, the three students whose mean scores on the survey were the lowest came from unfortunate and difficult early environments, as they described: “Despite all my animosity toward them, my parents have taught me a great deal … . They have taught me how not to treat others, and especially how not to treat my child”; “This was very hard for me because I felt like I wasn’t grounded and I had no real home … . It forced me to grow up on my own. I think a lot of times I grew up too fast;” and “Through my short 21 years of life, I have seen many lives cut short because of bad choices. During the first few years of my life I met all of the relatives I would later either see or hear about passing away due to their bad decisions.” It would seem, then, that these three items are indicators of an important underlying difference. The survey questions are about confidence and self-worth in the classroom environment. Students who did not find support in the class for those aspects of their lives now came into the classroom experience, by their own reports, with a history of a lack of support or without a particularly nurturing environment. CS-C classroom experiences for a single semester are apparently not salient enough to overcome what some learners bring into the experience.

A disconnect between FTF contact and CMC We have reviewed much evidence that shows that the format of the class encouraged discussion and criticality and that the students appreciated the way the class was structured. There is, however, one aspect of the course that did not work out quite as expected and that was somewhat perplexing given the fact that most of the course was quite successful. There is an apparent disconnect that some students experienced between their FTF and CMC interactions with each other. The

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strongest and clearest expression of this disconnect comes from one woman’s final paper: However, because of the format of the class was rather impersonal, I found I never really got a chance to truly get to know my classmates. The profiles although informative and interesting, I felt as if I was reading about strangers.

As the researchers, we found this quite consternating for several reasons. For one, the information that the students read about each other in the autobiographies was very intimate information, and students were able to learn things about each other, from the beginning of the semester, that one rarely learns about one’s classmates. This intimacy makes the student’s descriptor impersonal a surprising word choice. We conjecture that because of the formal writing format of the autobiographies, complete with three rounds of peer editing that included suggestions on wording and sentence structure, the students perceived the material as overall formal and therefore impersonal, despite the content of the papers. Their online discussions were not quite so formal as some of the quotes provided suggest. Still, these online discussions were written with a certain amount of premeditation, with the knowledge that a written record of the postings would remain throughout the semester and beyond, for all in the class to see, and they were written explicitly to fulfill requirements laid out by the teacher. Even FTF conversations were frequently conducted with the goal being for students to write out in the CMC format a summary of their conversation in such a way that it could be understood by all who viewed the discussion board, which, to repeat, constituted a permanent record. It may be that for these undergraduate students, what is said in spontaneous conversation simply feels more personal than what is communicated through formal writing. After all, they have spent all their lives participating in spontaneous speech. In contrast, their experiences with premeditated, organized writing have largely been restricted to written assignments in the educational context. Although many of these students, as members of a generation that grew up using computers, have no doubt used CMC extensively in their private communication, the nature of that CMC is sure to be qualitatively different from what they practiced in the class described in this chapter. Email is considered by a large proportion of younger people to be an outmoded, overly formal and slow form of communication, now that instant messaging has become the norm for younger people’s use of CMC (Thorne & Payne 2005). The following quote from another student’s final paper on connections touches on this idea of formality being opposed to the real and personal, but at the same time it cites the distance created by CMC as something that promotes disclosure.



Interpersonal and intercultural understanding 113

I have experienced a level of honesty from my classmates I have rarely experienced before. This honesty is partly due to the open format of the writing assignments. We were allowed to destructure our essays – make them less formal and more real – and that opened the door for the content to also be more real. It is also due, in part, to the feeling of anonymity that online posting allows.

This quote highlights the opposing forces that our chosen form of CMC, threaded electronic discussions, introduced to the class dynamic. By imposing a predetermined format and style, and by encouraging more carefully considered and constructed answers, it encouraged higher level thinking that led the students to new insights about themselves, others, and humanity itself. At the same time, for some members of the class, it defamiliarized communication and kept relations with their classmates from feeling very personal and friendly.

Conclusions and implications As a reminder for our readers, our research questions were as follows: 1. What impact did the CS-C pedagogy and using discussion as way of teaching/learning have on the students in the class? 2. How did the use of a blended model of CMC and FTF discussion influence the students and the objectives of the class? 3. Did CMC serve to enhance the class and its proposed aims, or did it have a negative or a negligible impact on them? Our surveys and study of the data from students’ writings for the class have shown that the learners were constantly challenged to co-construct their own ways of and contents for knowing. The effects of a blended classroom, where both FTF discussions and the spatially and temporally independent means of communication and co-construction that were afforded by the integration of CMC were another key concentration of our inquiry. We focused on learners’ engagement with the processes of their learning, as they interacted in an electronic medium and we reflected on their FTF interactions as well. For the most part, they were able to connect in a real and personal way to the practices of CS-C and the theories that inform them. We have been able to demonstrate that by gaining more and more familiarity with the practices of CS-C learning and teaching made manifest in FTF interactions and written conversations using CMC, learners became active participants in a new, emergent paradigm where they created knowing that had measurable effects on them in psychosocial and interpersonal ways. We have shown how a CS-C model has an impact on interaction and learning in postsecondary language

114 Kara McBride and Mary E. Wildner-Bassett

and culture education. This impact especially has effects on voice and identity in the CMC aspects of the blended classroom. Our analysis of the data focused on the key areas of criticality, sociality, coconstruction, identity development, and the implementation of blended pedagogy using both CMC and FTF interaction. The main findings are summarized here: 1. Sociality was evidenced by participants’ heightened openness and honesty toward each other through their computer-posted writings, and by their feeling of comfort in each other’s and the teacher’s presence. One student summed up the essence of this point when she wrote, “[We] … learned about our interconnectedness, the need for sincerity and honesty in our every day lives, the value of reaching out to someone….” 2. Critical social-constructivism maintains that all knowing is socially and culturally determined, and that the interaction that students have with their fellow learners, when guided by critical thought, leads to new ways of knowing and constitutes learning. The class approach, imbedded in criticality and sociality, was able to accomplish this goal, as evidenced by student writing and by the survey results. Students were themselves surprised at how much they could learn from each other, and were able to report on their own emerging co-construction of knowledge, both in the survey and in their writing: “I have learned how to reflect on myself by reading how other people reflect on themselves.” 3. The effects of early family experience emerged from the data as a surprisingly strong influence on learners’ responses to the survey and in their writing. This observation raised our awareness about the individual learner variables and pre-dispositions toward (or away from) confidence and self-worth in the classroom environment. Those students who did not demonstrate the experience of finding support in the class for those aspects of their lives came into the classroom experience, by their own reports, with a history of a lack of support or without a nurturing early environment. CS-C classroom experiences for one semester are apparently not powerful enough to overcome what some learners bring into the experience. This aspect of our findings motivates us to further investigations into the interaction of CS-C and blended classroom pedagogy with individual learner differences and self-reports about early family experience. 4. There is an apparent disconnect that some students experienced between their FTF and CMC interactions with each other. It may be that for these undergraduate students, what is said in spontaneous conversation simply feels more personal than what is communicated through formal writing. Also, as members of the generation that is moving from email to instant messaging as a preferred mode of communication, they may find the discussion board



Interpersonal and intercultural understanding 115

postings to be too formal, and therefore opposed to real and personal interaction. At the same time, though, students mentioned that the distance created by CMC was something that promoted more personal disclosure. This perception of distancing is reinforcement for our motifs of criticality and social constructivism. The students themselves realized that the blended CMC-FTF classroom gave them a means to gain a sense of Luke’s (2004) “… out-of-body experience of watching oneself watch oneself ….” From that perspective they could observe their own experience, ponder their own identities in development and express the results of the process in what they termed “personal disclosure.” In the class described in this chapter, students came to new interpersonal and intercultural understandings through a radical change in their ways of acting in a class. This paradigm shift toward co-constructing meaning is a function of all participants’ finding the courage to teach and learn in the risk-taking format of CS-C. We therefore conclude that the sorry state of higher education that Hersh and Merrow (2005) describe – a mutual nonaggression pact between professors and students, with each side agreeing not to impinge on the other and students preferring to be passive receptacles – is not inevitably true. Students are at least as surprised in their emergent paradigms of co-construction as are their teachers, but we all find the risks we take to engage in this new paradigm well worth the rewards. We close, as is most appropriate, with the words of one of the students, who also helped us make meaning in what this investigation found. She writes, On my first day of class, I thought, “Oh, God. It’s going to be a long semester.” I was convinced that this class was going to be a touchy-feely, weird, pseudo-feminist lecture that I would just have to get through to get my Gender/Race/Class/ Ethnicity/Non-Western credit. I was wrong. … people were open and honest and willing to share even intimate details of their lives simply because it was asked for. That seems so basic, but it’s the most important thing that I learned in this class. If you show a little interest in someone, take just a little bit of time and ask them a sincere question, they will give you a sincere answer. Most Americans have forgotten the value in “getting to know each other.” … This class has taught me a thing or two, and that’s saying a lot for an elective. I learned about our interconnectedness, the need for sincerity and honesty in our every day lives, the value of reaching out to someone, and the beautiful little things we all experience that make life bearable. I didn’t just learn about the person in each profile I read, I learned about humanity in general. I’m glad I didn’t let my judgmental side get the best of me on the first day of class.

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References Abrams, Z. I. (2003). Flaming in CMC: Prometheus’ Fire or Inferno’s? CALICO Journal, 20(2), 245–260. Beauvois, M. H. (1998). Write to speak: The effects of electronic communication on the oral achievement of fourth semester French students. In J. A. Muyskens (Ed.), New ways of learning and teaching: Focus on technology and foreign language education (pp. 93–115). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Belz, J. A. (2002). Social dimensions of telecollaborative foreign language study. Language Learning & Technology, 6(1), 60–81. Belz, J. A. & Müller-Hartmann, A. (2003). Teachers as intercultural learners: Negotiating German-American telecollaboration along the institutional fault line. The Modern Language Journal, 87(1), 71–89. Brookfield, S. & Preskill, S. (2005). Discussion as a way of teaching: Tools and techniques for democratic classrooms (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dimitrov, V. (2002). Learning ecology for human and machine intelligence. In V. Dimitrov & V. Korotkich (Eds.), Fuzzy Logic: A paradigm for the new millennium (pp. 386–393). Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag. Furstenberg, G., Levet, S., English, K., & Maillet, K. (2001). Giving a virtual voice to the silent language of culture: The CULTURA Project. Language Learning & Technology, 5(1), 55–102. Harklau, L. (1999). Representing culture in the ESL writing classroom. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language learning and teaching (pp. 109–135). Cambridge: CUP. Hersh, R. H. & Merrow, J. (Eds.). (2005). Declining by degrees: Higher education at risk. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ivanič, R. (1998). Writing and identity: The discoursal construction of identity in academic writing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ivanič, R. & Camps, D. (2001). I am how I sound: Voice and Self representation in L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(1), 3–33(31). Kelm, O. R. (1992). The use of synchronous computer networks in second language instruction: A preliminary report. Foreign Language Annals, 25, 441–454. Kern, R. (1995). Restructuring classroom interaction with networked computers: Effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. The Modern Language Journal, 79(4), 457–476. Kern, R., Ware, P., & Warschauer, M. (2004). Crossing frontiers: New directions in online pedagogy and research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 243–260. Kramsch, C. & Thorne, S.(2002). Foreign language learning as global communicative practice. In D. Block & D. Cameron (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 83–100). London: Routledge. Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2006). Blogging as participation: The active sociality of a new literacy. Paper presented to the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. April 11, 2006. Luke, A. (2004). Two takes on the critical. In B. Norton & K. Toohey (Eds.), Critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 21–29). Cambridge: CUP.



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Meagher, M. & Castaños, F. (1996). Perceptions of American culture: The impact of an electronically mediated cultural exchange program on Mexican high school student. In S. Herring (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Moos, R. H. (1987). The social climate scales: A user’s guide. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psycholinguistics Press. Müller-Hartmann, A. (2000). The role of tasks in promoting intercultural learning in electronic learning networks. Language Learning & Technology, 4(2), 129–147. O’Dowd, R. (2003). Understanding the ‘other side’: Intercultural learning a Spanish-English e-mail exchange. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 118–144. Quasthoff, U. (1993). Ethnozentrische Verarbeitung von Information: Zur Ambivalenz in der Funktionen von Stereotypen in der interkulturellen Kommunikation. In P. Matusche (Ed.), Wie verstehen wir Fremdes? Aspekte zur Klaerung von Verstehensprozessen (pp. 37–62). Munich: Goethe Institut. Rao, N. (1993). Verstehen einer fremden Kultur. In P. Matusche (Ed.), Wie verstehen wir Fremdes? Aspekte zur Klaerung von Verstehensprozessen (pp. 110–121). Munich: Goethe Institut. Schulz, R. A., LaLande II, J. F., Dykstra-Pruim, P., Zimmer-Loew, H., & James, C. J. (2005). In pursuit of cultural competence in the German language classroom. Die Unterrichtspraxis Teaching German, 38(2), 172–181. Taylor, P., Fraser, B. J., & Fisher, D. L. (1997). Monitoring constructivist classroom learning environments. International Journal of Educational Research, 27(4), 293–302. Thorne, S. L. & Payne, J. S. (2005). Evolutionary trajectories, internet-mediated expression, and language education. CALICO, 22(3), 371–397. Vollmer, G. (2002). Sociocultural perspectives on second language writing. ERIC/CLL News Bulletin, 25, 1–3. von der Emde, S., Schneider, J., & Kötter, M. (2001). Technically speaking: Transforming language learning environments through virtual learning environments (MOOs). The Modern Language Journal, 85, 210–255. Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23(3), 3–43. Ware, P. (2005). ‘Missed’ communication in online communication: Tensions in a GermanAmerican telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2), 64–89. Ware, P. D. & Kramsch, C. (2005). Toward an intercultural stance: Teaching German and English through telecollaboration. The Modern Language Journal, 89(2), 190–205. Warschauer, M. (1996). Comparing face-to-face and electronic discussion in the second language classroom. CALICO Journal, 13, 7–25. Wildner-Bassett, M. E. (2002). Planet Xeno: Creating a collaborative computer-mediated communication culture. In P. Comeaux (Ed.), Communication and collaboration in the online classroom: Examples and applications (pp. 157–174). Bolton, MA: Anker. Wildner-Bassett, M. E. & Meerholz-Haerle, B. (1999). Positional pedagogies and understanding the other: Epistemological research, subjective theories, narratives, and the language program director in a ‘web of relationships’. In L. K. Heilenman (Ed.), Research issues and language program direction (Vol. 9, pp. 203–243). Boston, MA: Heinle. Zuss, M. (1994). Value and subjectivity in literacy practice. In B. Ferdman, R.-M. Weber & A. Ramprez (Eds.), Literacy across languages and cultures (pp. 239–272). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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Appendix A: Part A of the survey Item Items listed from those showing most agreement to least number agreement

Disagreea Agree

28a 15a 19a 22a 26a

 0 18* 18* 18*  0

17   0*   0*   0* 18

18* 18* 16*

  0*   0*   1*

17* 17*  1

  1*   1* 17

 1

17

 2 16*

16   2*

 3  3  3  4 13*

15 15 15 14   5*

 5

13

 5

13

13*

  5*

 6  6

12 12

 7

10

 7  7  8 12   6*

11 11 10  6 12*

13   5*

 5 13*

  6a   7a 24a 18a 21a 23a   2a 20a 34a 25a 31a   8a 5a 12a   1a 33a 35a 17a 27a 16a 14a   3a 30a 13a 29a 11a   9a

I can trust the teacher. I haven’t learned much in this class.* The teacher doesn’t care much about the students’ interests.* The teacher isn’t much fun.* The way we are graded in this class is fair and representative of the class goals. The goals of this class were not clear to me.* This class isn’t as good as I thought it would be.* I would rather ask the teacher for help with the class than ask a classmate.* I can’t really be myself in this class.* Being in this class makes me nervous.* This class helped me understand my own life experiences better. I would like to see some of the ways we used computers in this class used in other classes. I expressed myself very freely and openly in this class. The teacher is inflexible about how we can be and act in the class.* The teacher is competent with technology. The other students can count on me to express my opinions. I have made friends in this class. I pursue topics that are interesting to me in this class. It wasn’t clear to me why we used computers so much in this class.* Things were well timed in this class – neither rushed nor too slow. I am a better communicator as a result of having taken this class. I don’t expect to ever talk to my classmates once this class is over.* I know the names of the other students in this class. I am clearer about who I am because of some of the discussions we have had in this class. After this class, I would be more likely to stand up for my own or others’ rights. I play an important role in this class. The class dynamic changed a lot during the semester. My writing has improved as a result of this class. I am a more compassionate person after having taken this class. I have not changed my ideas about my heritage as a result of this class.* After this class, I am a better reader. This class has had no effect on my career plans.*



  4a 10a 32a

Interpersonal and intercultural understanding 119

After this class, I am now a better listener. 14 I have reevaluated my political views because of something that 15 happened in this class. This class has had no effect on my views about religion or   3* spirituality.*

 4  3 15*

Originally, the students responded with one of four answers: strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree. For clarity, the answers are reported with the two choices of agreement grouped together, and similarly for disagreement. Of the 35 items, 7 items are framed negatively, so that disagreement with the statement reflects a more positive attitude towards the class. These items are marked with an asterisk. Finally, the items are reported in an order that reflects the items with the most positive responses first. The left-most column shows the order in which the items appeared on the version of the survey that the students responded to. a

Appendix B: Part B of the survey Item Items listed from those showing most number agreement to least agreement

Never Once or A few Many twice times times

10b

 1

2

2

13

13* 13* 13*

4* 2* 3*

0* 3* 1*

  0*   0*   1*

 0

1

6

12

12*

6*

0*

  0*

11*

2*

5*

  0*

  9*

6*

2*

  1*

  8*

6*

4*

  0*

 1

5

4

 8

 0

1

9

 8

 2

7

2

 7

 0

6

5

 7

 4  2

6 6

2 4

 6  6

23b 19b   4b 15b 30b 11b 25b 20b 17b 18b 21b 12b 13b   1b

I understood new perspectives and points of view because of this class. I needed to ask for help with D2L.*b Someone laughed at my ideas in this class.* There was a misunderstanding in the class that wouldn’t have arisen if we weren’t communicating through computers.* I understood something about a culture that I did not understand before. Having to get access to a computer for this class made me lose time.* Someone in my class said something really stupid during a class discussion.* The teacher got frustrated with the technology that we used for the class.* I got frustrated with the technology that we were supposed to use.* Doing things on computer allowed us to do things that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. My classmates made very interesting contributions in this class. I expressed myself in this class and then felt very satisfied being able to do that. Using computers added a kind of flexibility to the course that I appreciated. Participating in this class made me feel smart. I forgot about my personal problems while I was in this class.

120 Kara McBride and Mary E. Wildner-Bassett

  9b 24b 28b 29b   3b 14b 16b   8b   6b   5b 22b   2b 27b 26b   7b b

I said/wrote something in this class and someone else really got what I was trying to say. Something from this class led me to understand someone else’s point of view better. Participating in this class made me feel creative. I had an interesting exchange with someone in this class that I wouldn’t have had if we weren’t communicating through computers. I left class in a better mood than when I went in. I could see my classmates’ ideas develop over the semester. I felt good about helping a fellow student in this class. The computer end of the class created additional work for me.* I could see for myself that I was developing as a student. I talked to someone outside of the class about concepts that were discussed in this class. I formed study groups with others in this class. The teacher let me change a class assignment so that it better suited what I wanted to do. I learned something new about computers in this class. I have asked other students for help in this class. Something from this class led me to forgive someone I know.

 1

 6

5

 6

 1

 5

6

 6

 4  4

 5  4

4 5

 5  5

 2  2

 3  4

8 7

 5  5

 1

 6

6

 5

  6*

  4*

3*

  4*

 2

 5

7

 4

 2

 8

5

 3

 9  8

 6  4

1 3

 2  2

 5

 9

2

 1

 4 14

11  1

2 1

 1  1

Of the 30 items, 8 items are framed negatively, so that disagreement with the statement reflects a more positive attitude toward the class. These items are marked with an asterisk. Note also that the items are reported in an order that reflects the items with the most positive responses first. The left-most column shows the order in which the items appeared on the version of the survey that the students responded to.

Activities/Topics

Introduction to the course and formation of working dialogue groups

First introduction to the COHLab3 in ML 412

Peer editing in COHLab; Discussions in classroom

Peer editing in COHLab; Discussions in classroom

Week

January 13

January 18–21

January 24–28

January 31–Feb. 4

Weekly Schedule of Activities:

Women in Austria, pp. 104–119. “Politics, Gender, and Equality”

Begin discussion of “Intellectual and Cultural Autobiography”

Aptheker, B. 1989. Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Life (excerpts) Aptheker, B. 1989. Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Life (excerpts) Bohnen, A. 1993. Women in Society: Germany. pp. 37–65

Comments

Intellectual and cultural autobiography first draft due in COHLAb for peer editing Intellectual and cultural autobiography. Work on extending and deepening

Exploring the WWW and other sources for information on women in German-speaking societies. Discuss in detail with your partner and your discussion group.

Daily life from women’s and men’s perspectives in Germany: What are the similarities and differences?

Students will be asked to find a partner who can be somehow defined as “other”, i.e. of other gender, background culture, family background, orientation, etc. Continue discussion and Daily life from women’s and men’s perspectives: Are begin writing “Intellectual and there differences? Cultural Autobiography”

Writing

Reading

Brief Description of the Course: This course views many aspects of the daily lives of individuals in the contemporary European German-speaking societies. The course content includes recent historical perspectives, such as the Wall and unification; daily life, including the political issues that affect daily living; and personal profiles of women and others in German-speaking countries. Collaborative computer-mediated activities in the COHlab in ML 412 will be integrated as essential elements of the course. Texts: A reader for the class will be made available, as will occasional additional handouts.

Welcome! German 274 Spring 2005 The Dialogue of the Sexes: Women and Men in Contemporary German-Speaking Societies Gen.Ed. Tier II Course in Individuals & Society and General Education Gender, Race, Class, Ethnicity, or Non-Western Area Studies Instructor: Prof. Mary E. Wildner-Bassett

Appendix C: Class syllabus and selected activities

Interpersonal and intercultural understanding 121

Focus on aspects of the person’s life that overlap or are very similar with your own interests, goals, talents, personal history, or other overlaps. The second focus will be on aspects of the person’s life that are different or “other” than your own interests, goals, talents, personal history, or other overlaps. Read for focus on aspects that overlap or are very similar with and different or “other” than own interests, goals, talents, personal history, or other overlaps.

Autobiographies final draft due Begin work on research profiles a woman or another “other” in German-speaking society First draft due in COHLAb for peer editing of researched personal profiles in detail with your partner and your discussion group in the COHlab session Continue work on personal profiles. Second draft due for peer editing

Women in Austria, pp. 213–234, “War and Gender Identity: The Experience of Austrian Women 1945–1950”

Final version of research profile due. Begin work on interview profile. See comments this week and first week after break. Have Fun

Viewing of documentary films

No Classes

Reading: Women in Austria, pp. 56–82, “Rights at last? The first generation of female members of parliament in Austria”

Be Safe

Interview with women or another “other” in your society. Compare with researched profile of a woman or another “other” in German-speaking society. Interviews are similar to those you have read in the readings for this week.

Read for good writing and for aspects that overlap or are very similar with and different or “other” than own interests, goals, talents, personal history, or other overlaps.

Historical views: Milestones in German-speaking women’s lives.

Second draft of Autobiographies due

Bohnen, A. 1993. Women in Society: Germany. pp. 11–35

Bohnen, A. 1993. Women in Diversity in the Germanspeaking world: “Other” Society: Germany, pp. 67–81 women and men. Peer editing in COHLab; Discussions in classroom

First quiz on readings and discussions Peer editing in COHLab; Discussions in classroom Historical views: Social situation and personal expectations of women and men in the immediate post war years

Equal rights: Women, men and the law in Germanspeaking countries. Peer editing in COHLab; Discussions in classroom March 7–11 Review sessions: Historical perspectives, daily life and personal profiles of women and others in German-speaking cultures. Second quiz on readings and discussions March 14–18 Spring Break

February 28–Mar.ch 4

February 21–25

February 14–18

February 7–11

122 Kara McBride and Mary E. Wildner-Bassett

c

Review postings by fellow students; review any other readings

What is the “dialogic emergence of culture”? Where are you in the process of entering a dialogue with the German-speaking cultures? Where are you in the dialogue of the sexes? What is the “dialogic emergence of culture”? Where are you in the process of entering a dialogue with the German speaking cultures? Where are you in the dialogue of the sexes?

Written reflections on the connections among these pieces and the lives of class participants. Compare your own experiences to what have read. Discuss in detail with your partner and your discussion group.

After reading this section, reflect once again on cultural and personal shaping of identity. Compare your own experiences to what have read.

Interview someone you know who you consider to be “other” than you are. Ask them about their general life experiences, but focus on one of the general topics from our class (e.g. world of work, family life, educational experiences, political involvements). Discuss your reactions to the film in detail with your partner and your discussion group.

COHLab is an acronym for the Collaborative Computing Laboratory of the College of Humanities at our institution.

May 2–5 Continue class summary and Last day of review. Comments on peers’ classes May 4 work in COHLab; Discussions in classroom May 12 Final Exam 8:00–10:00 am

April 25–29

April 18–22

April 11–15

April 4–8

March 28–April 1

Final draft of connections statement due

Work on Interview profile. Write a summary and description of your interview, including what your criteria were for the choice of the person. First draft of Interview Profile Women and men in the “New Shoemaker, S. 1996. My Second Life. Video viewing and discussion due Germany”. Unification (the Wende) and change. Peer editing in COHLab; Discussions in classroom Austrian Women, pp. 197–212, Final draft of interview Gender identities and life “Representations of the beginprofile due stories ning: Shaping Gender Identities Comments on peers’ work in COHLab; Discussions in in Written Life Stories of Women classroom and Men” Begin summary statement – Third quiz on readings and Kolinsky, pp. 100–150 Connections discussions Write a description of your Girls and boys, women and Kolinsky, pp. 100–150 own schooling experiences to men in schools and higher date, with a focus on gender education issues that might occur to you Class summary and review. Illustration of class concepts in First draft of connections Peer editing work in COHLab; viewing and critical discussion of statement due Discussions in classroom the film Run Lola Run

March 21–25 Women and men in the “New Excerpts from Dodds and AlGermany”. Unification (the len-Thompson. 1994. The Wall Wende) and change. in my Backyard and Kolinsky, pp. 259–294

Interpersonal and intercultural understanding 123

Creating comfort zones of orality in online discussion forums Anja Wanner

University of Wisconsin-Madison

This chapter examines the discourse organization of Internet discussion forums, which seem to invite conceptually less oral forms of communication than chatrooms in three main ways: (a) Whereas chatroom communicat­ion is simultaneous and is often one-on-one, communication in a discussion forum is non-simultaneous and public. (b) Whereas chatroom conversations are only visible to those who are in the chatroom at the time of the conversation, postings in a discussion forum are not transitory and can be seen, searched, and linked to long after they have been made. (c) Whereas postings in a chatroom are sequenced purely chronologically, postings in a discussion forum are organized thematically into threaded discussions. In this chapter, I show how users systematically override these functional restrictions of discussion forums and reclaim “comfort zones of orality” by making sophisticated use of the structural options provided by the forum software to create and maintain spaces in which they can engage in chat-like conversations, with the added benefit of creating a visible discourse history. I argue that this seemingly against-its-purpose use of a discussion forum is essential for participants to become members of an online community. Data come mainly from the discussion forum hosted by the major German weekly Die Zeit.

The Internet has significantly changed the way people communicate with each other through the use of written language. A number of genres have emerged that challenge the traditional idea that written discourse tends to be asynchronous and to involve more formal language. However, the difference between oral and computer-mediated communication still runs deep. Erickson (1999) pointed out that computer-mediated conversations may be “searched, browsed, replayed, annotated, visualized, restructured, and recontextualized, with what are likely to be profound impacts on personal, social, and institutional practices” (para. 4). Among the genres that have been analyzed with respect to their situational, linguistic,

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and interactional characteristics are emails, electronic newsletters, blogs, instant messaging, online chats, and discussion forums or newsgroups (Baron 2003; Beißwenger 2000; Crystal 2001; Lewis 2003; Marcoccia 2004; Werry 1996; Ziegler 2002). There is an ongoing discussion about whether one should consider these genres as text types or rather as forms of oral communication (cf. Ziegler 2002) and whether or not they are instantiations of a general new variety of “netspeak,” a “fourth medium” – in addition to oral, written, and signed language – that displays features unique to the Internet and manifested in all types of online discourse (Crystal 2001: 18). In this chapter I show that while each of these forms of “persistent conversations” (Erickson 1999, Title) can be characterized by certain structural parameters (such as simultaneousness and transitoriness of communication), users may override limitations resulting from these parameters to create a space that serves their communicational needs and not necessarily the needs of those who provide the platform for their discourse. In the first part of this chapter I contrast the communicative setting of a discussion forum with that of a chatroom. The discussion forum with its non-transitory postings and its thematic organization invites more formal forms of discourse than the chatroom. In the second part I position discussion forums and chatrooms in a continuum of conceptually written versus oral communication, following the criteria developed by Koch and Oesterreicher (1994). I then demonstrate how users in a discussion forum systematically use graphic code and whatever options the software provides them with to create what I refer to as “comfort zones of orality.” It will be shown that, seemingly paradoxically, participants open threads without a specific theme, only to manage fast-paced discussions carefully and to use sophisticated technical means to achieve topic continuity within these threads. I argue that these “comfort zones” are not attempts at emulating a chatroom, but rather are the very deliberate construction of a traceable discourse history within an online community.

The communicative setting of a discussion forum According to Joyce and Kraut (2006), in the United States “over 50% of all Internet users regularly stay in contact with an online group” (Introduction, para. 1). . Preece and Maloney-Krichmar (2005) discuss several approaches to defining the term online community. I use the term here in the technical sense of a group of “people who come together for a particular purpose, and who are guided by policies (including norms and rules) and supported by software” (Preece & Maloney-Krichmar 2005, Introduction, para. 3, their italics).



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Discussion forums (also called discussion boards or newsgroups) are a subcategory of these online groups. They are asynchronous forms of web-based discourse in which communication is public and organized within topic areas. Marcoccia (2004), who looked specifically at Usenet newsgroups, describes them as “on-line polylogues [….], computer-mediated hybrid[s] of interpersonal and mass communication” (p. 116). Thematically, discussion forums can be highly specialized or rather general. For instance, most of eBay’s discussion forums deal with issues related to eBay transactions – how to give feedback, how to bid wisely, how to act if a buyer doesn’t pay and so forth – and there is no reason to assume that anybody who does not regularly sell or buy items on eBay would ever become part of this community. On the other end of the spectrum we find online communities like Table Talk or The Well, which are part of the online magazine Salon.com and cover discussion areas as diverse as Books, Health and Science, News and the Media, The White House, and Work Life. The discussion forum that I examine in some detail, associated with the German weekly Die Zeit, lies somewhere in the middle: Like eBay’s forums, it is sponsored and maintained by a mother company whose primary business is not to distribute information on the web, and like the discussion forums on Salon.com, it covers a broad range of topic areas and is part of a web of general interest online articles and other online services. Discussion forums are usually organized into thematic areas (very much like folders on a computer) or domains, which may contain any number of discussion threads. A thread is a discussion devoted to a specific topic. In Table Talk, for example, the domain Books has threads like Harry Potter predictions or Book recommendations. Discussion forums may or may not be moderated. The “managerial influence” (Crystal 2001: 133) of moderators or hosts varies widely. Moderators may have the power to shorten or delete messages that are not in line with the forum rules and they may be able to block a participant from posting further messages. In some forums, only moderators can open a discussion thread, in others any participant can (but that does not make them moderators of the thread). Moderators usually do not actively steer the direction of a discussion. The following example illustrates a posting from a discussion board, in this case Table Talk. We can see the hierarchical structure of the forum: Example 1 is

. Newsgroups is the term used on Usenet. Technically, newsgroups are different from discussion forums in that a posting first goes to a user’s news server and from there is copied to other servers. Newsgroups are usually accessed with a special client software. . Full access to the discussion forums on Salon.com is only available to subscribing (and paying) members. . The URL is http://tabletalk.salon.com.

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a posting in the thread What did you rent last night, which is a thread within the domain Movies. Each posting indicates the writer’s screen name (not necessarily the participant’s real name) and optional tagline, a time stamp, and a numeric identifier within the thread. The posting in Example 1 is a self-contained short review of the movie Flirting with Disaster, that is, it directly addresses the topic of the thread. The first line of the posting is an answer to the thread question. Using terminology from conversation analysis, one would say that the thread title (What did you rent last night?) and the first part of the posting (Flirting with Disaster) form an adjacency pair (Levinson 1983). Unlike a posting in a chatroom, Example 1 is not a reply to anyone else’s postings and it doesn’t require a response either. It is essentially a self-contained contribution to a list of film reviews. Michal Steep talks about a movie that he enjoyed more than he had expected. Example 1. Table Talk >> Movies >> What did you rent last night? Michal Steep – 07:09 pm Pacific Time – Aug 15 2005 – #4509  solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short Flirting With Disaster I think I resisted this movie for so long because while I don’t harbor any animosity toward Ben Stiller (how could I, since I adore his parents?), I’m just not a fan. But it turns out that a) this is not a “Ben Stiller movie”, and b) he’s quite endearing in it. Anyway, very funny film, with a fantastic cast hitting on all cylinders. It felt like Robert-Altman-meets-Christopher-Guest at times. 90 minutes well spent.

Although there are certainly similarities between chatrooms and discussion forums, the communicative setting of a discussion forum – public, non-transitory, topic-oriented – is very different from that of a chatroom. In a chatroom, a message can only be read by those who are logged on to the chatroom when the message is posted, and the pace of interaction is necessarily faster. Crystal (2001) used the hybrid term “chatgroup” to refer to chats and discussion forums alike (p. 11). According to him, discussion forums are simply asynchronous chatgroups. However, this generalization is too broad. The following sections show that discussion forums differ from chatrooms in a number of situational parameters and that these differences affect the topics that are chosen and the way participants interact with each other.

. All data come from publicly available threads. Screen names that were not obviously pseudonyms have been changed.



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Synchronicity and simultaneousness Strictly speaking, neither chatroom conversations nor discussion forums are synchronous forms of communication. Chatroom communication is simultaneous, but usually not quite synchronous. Participants who engage in communication have to be present in the chatroom at the same time (i.e. simultaneously), but they cannot normally see each letter as it is typed (Storrer 2001). They type their turns into a box and then click on a send button, which means there is a time lag between production and reception. Considering the fast pace of chat conversations, this time lag can feel quite noticeable. As a result of these time lags and also of the shortness and the high frequency of turns typically found in chatroom conversation, unintended sequencing of turns occurs quite often (Schönfeldt & Gelato 2003). In addition to being not simultaneous, communication in a discussion forum is also clearly asynchronous. The metaphors of a room (for chat communication) versus a bulletin board (for discussion forums) capture the difference between the two communication settings very well. In a chatroom, one enters a room and can join a conversation or just hang around and listen to what others are saying. Postings are visible only to those who are in the same room at the same time. In a discussion forum, however, postings are visible to anyone who visits the forum at any point after the posting has been made. Messages can be read and responded to long after they have been posted, just like a note on a real bulletin board can be read long after the car that someone is putting up for sale has been sold. Marcoccia (2004) hypothesized that newsgroup users (and by extension, discussion forum users) do not perceive the delays between a message and a response to it as gaps because they do not share the same timeframe: “when a user reads a message sent to the forum, for him/her it is a new message, even though it may have been sent several days before” (p. 116). Although it can happen that the two parts of an adjacency pair are produced weeks apart, it is highly unlikely that users are unaware of the time gap in between given that all postings on a discussion forum bear a time stamp (unlike the majority of postings on a cork discussion board). Furthermore, depending on the software, threads without any activity may shift to the bottom of the list of discussions. Regular participants on a discussion board sometimes make the conscious effort to revive a thread and to move it back to the top. This maneuver is known as bumping up a thread. If a thread is low on the list, this position is evidence that the thread has not been active for a while.

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Dialogicity When someone enters a chatroom, there is normally some sort of automatic message of the kind x enters the room. Participants engage in welcome (and goodbye) rituals in order to signal their availability for a conversation (Beißwenger 2000; Bader 2002). There is not much one can do in a chatroom if there is nobody else in the room at the same time; it is essentially a dialogic form of communication. The situation is different in a discussion forum. There is no specific room that is entered, and one does not normally know how many participants are logged on at a given time. Marcoccia (2004) identified three discourse roles for participants of a discussion forum: Senders are the ones that regularly post messages; readers or eavesdroppers, also known as lurkers, are the ones who join a forum without ever posting anything themselves, that is, without leaving any trace of their presence, and hosts are the ones who steer discussions (p. 131). While lurkers are often frowned on in a chatroom, it is perfectly alright to lurk on a discussion forum – nobody will notice anyway. Which role one can take may depend on the structural settings of the discussion board. In the forum Table Talk, for example, most threads are public, which means that anyone can read them. But only users that are logged in and have paid a subscription fee can post messages. The slogan Log in. Lurk smarter. Join Table Talk to keep your place in the dialog is used as an invitation to lurkers to become paying subscribers (and thus potential senders). Whether or not lurking readers become visible, committed participants in discussions seems to depend to some extent on the response they get when they first post a message. In a recent study based on six thematically oriented discussion forums Joyce and Kraut (2006) found that receiving a response to an initial posting increased the likelihood that the poster would post again. It is interesting that the nature of the response (length of response, emotional tone of response, content of response) was not a significant factor in determining whether or not a newcomer would post again. Being responded to is a marker of being recognized as a member of a community, and a sense of belonging is the basis for forming the newcomer's commitment to this group.

Transitoriness and publicness Conversations in discussion forums are public. If a participant posts something on the discussion board, it will be visible to anyone who visits the forum. Such publicness is not typically the context for one-on-one conversations, as could be seen in Example 1. Even though users may address their posting to a specific member of the community, others will still be able to read the message. There is



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no equivalent to chatroom whispering (one-on-one conversations that are invisible to others) in discussion forums. Example 2 shows how a participant asks a question addressed to the general audience. Example 2. Table Talk >> Books >> What I’m reading NOW, redux Wonder Dog – 09:43 am Pacific Time – Aug 12 2005 – #5151 Just finished reading Michael Chabon’s Summerland. Mixed feelings and thoughts have I. Has anyone else read the book, and, if so, what did you think? BTW, I loved The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay though I thought the Antarctic section a little odd. keith_h79 – 10:14 am Pacific Time – Aug 12 2005 – #5152 I haven’t read summerland but have considered picking it up during many book buying binges! I also loved Kavalier and Klay and thought the Antarctic scene was a little misplaced but interesting nonetheless.

Wonder Dog asks if “anyone” has read the book Summerland by Michael Chabon, and keith h79 responds to the question about half an hour later. In Example 3, Ms. Anthrope asks the general community whether or not eating onions is dangerous for dogs. Five minutes later godzoriz answers the question, using an abbreviated form of address (Ms. A.), thereby making it very clear that this answer goes with Ms. Anthrope’s question. Later in the thread, other people answer the same question. Ms. Anthrope and godzoriz do not have a private conversation, and other participants join in as they see fit and answer Ms. Anthrope’s question from their own perspective. Example 3. Table Talk >> House and Garden >> Dogs: Behavior, Training and General Appreciation Ms. Anthrope – 04:50 pm Pacific Time – Aug 26 2005 – #3376 So dogs (and cats) can’t handle the Vitamin K in onions? Is it only the amount in onions or any Vitamin K? godzoriz – 04:55 pm Pacific Time – Aug 26 2005 – #3377 Dunno, Ms.A. It coming up here was the first I’d heard of the onion/garlic thing, so the only thing I’ve noted is what I quoted before.

Although chatroom conversations can be downloaded and saved, they are essentially transitory and visible only to those who are logged in at a given time. Postings in a discussion forum, on the other hand, are crucially not transitory and, depending on the archiving policies of the host, can be read, bookmarked, searched, linked, or responded to years after they have been posted. Discussion forums therefore invite more careful wording and more elaborate postings than chatrooms. In Example 2,

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Wonder Dog is mainly concerned with the book Summerland, which she did not like very much, but she adds that she liked other books by the same author, thereby minimizing the risk of sounding confrontational.

Topic-orientedness By their very nature discussion forums are organized hierarchically and thematically. Participants have to make up their minds in advance regarding which topic they want to talk about. This choice may be easy if one joins an eBay help discussion board with a specific problem, but it is more difficult with discussion boards that have very broad topic areas, such as Table Talk. The strict thematic organization encourages information-oriented styles of communication, such as problem-solving, questions and answers, or discussing the pros and cons of a controversial topic. Moreover, the sequential order of postings is not determined purely on a first-come, first-served basis, as is the case in chatrooms (cf. Storrer 2001). In some forums, participants can choose between a linear view, in which postings within a thread are displayed in the order in which they were made, or a threaded view, in which participants can respond directly to any posting. If this option is available, one can, for example, have visual adjacency pairs despite considerable time lags and numerous new messages between postings. If this option is not available, the automatic numbering of postings still allows for referring to a specific message without quoting or rephrasing it.

Written or oral communication? The Internet has been the platform for new forms of written communication challenging the traditional pairing of written language as formal and oral language as informal (Bader 2002; Baron 2003; Dürscheid 1999; Haase, Huber, Krumeich, & Rehm 1997; Koch & Oesterreicher 1994; Rehm 2002; Tannen 1982b). It has become more important than ever to clarify what exactly one is talking about when one uses the term written language. Koch and Oesterreicher (1994) distinguish between utterances that are medially written, that is, they are are realized through graphic code, and utterances that are conceptually written, which means that they are more distanced and less spontaneous (p. 587f.). Medially written utterances can be conceptually oral (such as an email to a friend), and medially . Pronouns are used in line with the gender that participants self-identify with in the forum.



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oral utterances can be conceptually written (such as a scholarly talk). Unlike the distinction between medially oral and written forms of communication, the distinction between conceptually oral versus written forms of communication is not dichotomous. Rather, the terms represent two prototypes with a broad spectrum in between. Among the parameters to consider are the distance (that exists in time, space, and relationship) between participants, the salience of the situational context (in oral face-to-face discourse participants can rely on a shared reference system), and the role of planning ahead (written discourse allows for more elaborate texts, with well organized topics and complex syntax). Linguistic markers of conceptually oral discourse include incomplete sentences, pauses, short turns, and the use of discourse particles and high-frequency “passe-partout words” (Koch & Oesterreicher 1994: 591), which are semantically underspecified and fit many different contexts, such as do or get. With the structural characteristics outlined above, it seems that discourse in discussion forum settings is more conceptually written and less involved (Tannen 1982a) than in chatrooms: The hierarchy of threads invites topic-oriented, informative contributions, potentially long time lags between postings pave the way for elaborate monologs, the absence of visible communication partners makes it unlikely that postings will be addressed to individual participants, and the public, non-transitory status of each posting makes it more likely that participants will word their contributions carefully. Chatroom communication seems to be based on a “mindset of orality” (Beißwenger 2000: 41): Participants enter a metaphorically constituted room, greet each other, and spontaneously produce texts that mimic the syntax and pronunciation of spoken language (including contracted forms, cliticized pronouns, and phonetic spellings), combining them with web-specific elements or formats like emoticons, verbal glosses – also known as inflectives (Schlobinski 2001) – set off by asterisks or angle brackets (), and capitalization to emulate involvement and prosody, which can only occur in (medially) written forms of discourse (Bader 2002; Kilian 2001). Compared to chatrooms, the communicative setting of discussion forums is conceptually more written: It is definitely asynchronous, it is non-simultaneous (in principle), it is always one-to-many (while chatrooms often allow participants to engage in private conversations, called “whispering”), postings are public and non-transitory, and there can be long time lags between two turns that are related to each other. However, many discussion forums typically have an area whose raison d’être seems to be to break out of the structural corset of strict thematic organization and non-specific addressees. In the Zeit-Debatte this area is called the Lounge, Front Porch is the equivalent at eBay (“Sit down and relax with eBay friends!”), and the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel simply has a Treffpunkt (“meeting point”). Note that these names all refer to places that invite informal gatherings.

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In the following, I demonstrate that discussion forums typically have a comfort zone of orality, in which regular participants use the medium very much like a chatroom, with the added benefit of creating a visible discourse history.

Characterization of a particular discussion forum: The Zeit-Debatte Structure of the forum The discussion forum on which most of my observations are based is part of the online edition of the major German weekly Die Zeit (“The Time”), which offers free access to articles and a number of online services, such as a newsletter, a job listing service, and a collection of blogs. The newspaper was founded in 1946 and is considered one of the most influential German newspapers, with a high proportion of college-educated readers. It covers areas such as politics, education, and culture and has the highest circulation among weekly newspapers in Germany. The online version, Zeit online, is a daughter company of the same publisher. It has a reach of about one million unique users per month (Zeit online internet facts 2005). Because most articles can be read without registration, only a fraction of these users are actually registered. However, in order to participate in the discussion forum one has to be a registered member. The Zeit online discussion forum, which was founded in 1999, is officially called the Debatte (“debate”) or Zeit-Debatte, but participants simply refer to it as zin, an acronym for Zeit im Internet (“The Time on the Internet”), and to themselves ironically as Zinioten, a self-deprecating blending of Zin and Idioten (“idiots”).10 In 2003, the year from which the relevant examples discussed here are taken, the central database for all online services requiring registration had about 10,000

. I would like to thank two former moderators of the Zeit-Debatte, Corinna Maliske and Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer, for providing me with helpful information on the history of the forum. . In 2006, the circulation was about 480,000 paid copies per week (Zeit-Mediadaten 2006). To compare: The circulation of the Sunday edition of The New York Times in 2005 was about 1.7 million copies (New York Times Fact Sheet 2005). . The concept of a unique user is used to measure the popularity of a website. A unique user is identified by an IP number and a user agent, such as a web browser. To compare: The online version of The New York Times has more than 1.3 million unique users per day (New York Times Fact Sheet 2005) and it has more than 10.8 million active registered users. 10. The URL of the forum is http://www.debatte.zeit.de/.



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names,11 but the number of regular participants in the Zeit-Debatte was much lower (around 100). Within the discussion forum, there is also a chatroom, but it is usually empty (part of the reason is that some participants cannot use it due to the firewall settings on their computer). The Zeit-Debatte is a moderated discussion forum: One general moderator, an employee of the publishing company, is assisted by a few participant-moderators, who have moderator rights within individual threads. The topic organization on the Debatte loosely follows established sections in the paper, such as Politik (“politics”), Gesellschaft (“society”), Wissen (“science”), Leben (“life”), and some of the articles in the online edition of the paper have links to threads in the Debatte. Within each topic domain there are dozens of threads. Each user can subscribe to threads he or she is interested in and will see new postings in a personalized Message Center. There is a conscious effort of the general moderator to create connections between the paper and the forum, for example by opening threads relating to an article in the paper or by pointing participants to an article in the paper. Some participants in the Debatte identify themselves as readers of the print version of the paper, but in general articles from the paper hosting the forum are not discussed more intensively than articles from other sources. The main criterion for a newspaper article to become discussion material in the forum is that one can link to it. Almost all of the regular participants are native speakers of German. There are threads that encourage using another language, but they are not very popular – the thread Le bistro franco-allemand, for example, which invites participants to post messages in French, was opened in 2003 and 3 years later has only grown to about 135 postings.12

Discussion in topic-oriented areas Depending on the topic of a thread, the discussion in a forum can resemble that of ordinary panel discussions (cf. Biber 1988), which share characteristics of scientific texts (e.g., high numbers of passives and nominalizations) as well as of conversational texts (e.g., high numbers of pronouns and contracted forms).

11. At that time, users did not have to state their real name for the registration process. All they needed was a working email address. 12. The use of English thread names or screen names in German discussion forums reflects the role that English plays as the dominant language of web-based discourse. Although many participants link to articles in English and incorporate some English words and phrases in their postings, English is not used as a general language of discussion.

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Example 4 from the topic area Science illustrates the kind of posting that one might expect, given the situational characteristics of this specific discussion forum. The topic of the thread is Darwin’s theory of evolution, this posting deals with the question of how the term Mensch (“human being”) should be defined. As in the examples from Table Talk, each posting begins with an identifier in which the name of the participant, the date and time of the posting, the name of the thread, and the number of the posting in the thread are listed. The first thing to notice about the posting in Example 4 is its length and its structure: There are five carefully separated paragraphs, each with complete sentences with complex syntax (subordinate clauses, relative clauses, complex noun phrases) and scientific vocabulary. Within these paragraphs, a specific font is used to highlight keywords.13 Using this font requires minimal knowledge of html formatting (or of the forum-internal shortcut). The visual impression of this posting is very much like that of a text that could have been taken from a textbook. Example 4. From: Zeit-Debatte >> Science >> Evolution Theory14 Dr. P. Specht - 23. Feb 2001 19:03 (Evolutionstheorie, Pro & Contra, #143) Zu #133 von Richard Virchner und #140 von FM: Eine politische Definition wäre eine, die von einer politischen Ent­schei­ dungsinstanz gesetzt wird (heutzutage z.B. vom Bundestag, früher z.B. per Dekret von Karl dem Großen oder bei den Römern vom Rat der Ältesten oder was auch immer). Während früher i.d.R. keine Notwendigkeit dazu vorlag (mit perversen Ausnahmen während der Kolonialzeit und bei den Nazis, wo allerdings von irgendwelchen angeblich minderwertigen Menschen gefaselt wurde), fehlt heute die Legitimation (Biologie wird nicht per Gesetz beschlossen). So kann „Mensch“ also sicherlich nicht definiert werden. Auch in anderen Kulturkreisen sehe ich das nicht. Ich glaube, sogar bei den Taliban in Afghanistan, wo die Frauen praktisch keinerlei Rechte haben, werden sie dennoch als “Mensch” angesehen, oder? Also scheidet auch die gesellschaftliche Übereinkunft in einer größeren Gruppe ähnlich Denkender als Abgrenzungsmöglichkeit für den Begriff Mensch aus. 13. For typographical reasons, this font (bold font in the original) is represented as italics here. 14. The way the posting is represented here is a simplified version of how it appears on the screen. On the screen, each posting is embedded in a frame that includes the name of the forum, the topic of the thread, instructions on formatting, and so forth. Participants’ screen names appear in red and link to a short profile of the user, including a list of postings most recently made by this person. Participants may also use a tagline (neglected here, as it is frequently changed, and the new version is retroactively applied to old postings as well).



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SF können wir hier wohl überspringen. Zu den “Anencephalen” kann ich mich mangels Wissen nicht äußern und bitte um Erläuterung, falls etwas Relevantes dahintersteckt. “Mode” ist in seiner Beliebigkeit/Kurzfristigkeit nicht zu übertreffen und war wohl eher provokativ gemeint. Bleibt also nur die biologische Definition. Die Menschenaffen sollen doch offenbar nur deshalb intensiver einbezogen werden, weil es die Erkenntnisse der Molekular­ genetik nahe legen. Oder andersherum: Dass die Menschenaffen in der biologischen Systematik nun näher an den Menschen rücken sollen bzw. die Gruppeneinteilung etwas den molekulargenetischen Erkenntnissen angepasst werden, spricht ja gerade dafür, dass die Einteilung wissenschaftlich (nach biologischen Kriterien) und nicht politisch vorgenommen wird. Damit erledigt sich dann ebenso der angeblich “theoretische Beleg” für eine politische Definition mit dem hypothetischen kontinuierlichen Abfall des menschlichen DNA-Anteils. Da es diese hypothetischen Zwischenstufen nicht gibt, sondern nur diskrete Gruppen mit Verwandt­schaftsbeziehungen, welche sich seit der Molekulargenetik über DNA-Differenzen einteilen lassen, muss eine feinere Unterteilung, gar nicht getroffen werden. Die wissenschaftliche Charakterisierung und Benennung dieser Gruppen genügt. Und damit sind wir wieder beim Punkt. Für den “Mensch” als Art gibt es heute nur die Möglichkeit der biologischen Definition, als schiere Folge des heutzutage vorliegenden biologischen Wissens. Somit hat FM in #140 meiner Meinung nach richtig geantwortet. Aber aus dem o.g. “theoretischen Beleg” folgen interessante Dinge, wie in meiner nächsten Mitteilung zu lesen ist. Bookmark Translation of Example 4 into English: Dr. P. Specht - 23. Feb 2001 19:03 (Evolutionary Theory, Pros & Cons, #143) On #133 by Richard Virchner and #140 by FM: A political definition would be one that is settled by a body of political decision makers (these days, for example, by the Bundestag [German parliament], in former times, for example, via imperial decree by Charlemagne, or in Roman times by the council of elders or whatever). While previously normally there was no necessity for this (with perverse exceptions during colonial times and during the Nazi time, when there was gibbering about some supposedly inferior human beings), today there is no legitimization for this approach (biology cannot be legislated). This approach cannot be the way to define the term “human being”. I don’t see this in other cultural groups either. I believe that even with the Taliban in Afghanistan, where women have practically no rights, they are still seen as “human beings”, right? That means that an agreement within a

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larger group of people or in a society cannot count as a defining criterion for the concept of human being either. SF we can skip here. On the subject of “anencephalics” I am not knowledgeable and cannot say anything, please tell me more about it, if this is relevant in any way. “Fashion” cannot be outranked in its arbritrariness/ephemerality and was probably meant as a provocative argument. Which leaves us with a biological definition. Obviously, primates are only included in the discussion because this is in line with findings from molecular genetics. Or to put it the other way round: The very fact that in the biological system primates should be considered as closer to human beings tells us that the classification is done scientifically (following biological criteria), not politically. This takes care of the presumed “theoretical proof ” in favor of a political definition using a hypothetical decrease of human DNA. Since there are no such hypothetical in-between stages, but only discrete groups that are related to each other, there is no need for a fine-grained subclassification. The scientific characterization and naming of these groups suffices. This brings us to the main point again: For “human beings” as a species there is today only the possibility of a biological definition, as a simple consequence of what we know from modern biology. That means that FM in #140, in my opinion, has given the correct answer. However, from the above-mentioned “theoretical proof ” there follow some interesting things, as can be read in my next posting. Bookmark

The first line of the posting situates it in the context of the thread: Dr. P. Specht – a participant with a low number of postings in the Debatte – comments on two postings made the day before by other participants, referring to their number in the thread, very much like one refers in written discourse to a letter by the date it was received. A more expert way to make this reference would be to link to the postings directly, but this linking requires knowledge of how to post a link, and only regular participants bother to learn these technicalities. There is interaction with other postings in the thread, but it is minimal. In the last line of the posting the sender announces that consequences of the criteria for the definition of Mensch outlined in this posting will be discussed in the sender’s next posting. This deictic reference indicates that Dr. P. Specht has planned the content of his or her next message already – it does not really matter how other participants will respond to this message.



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The lounge as a comfort zone of orality A topic domain that is very different from the one just portrayed is called the Lounge. It is clearly the most dynamic discussion area in the Zeit-Debatte (in May 2003, the most active thread in the Lounge had more than 90,000 postings, while discussions in the Politik area rarely go beyond 500 postings). Almost all of the regular forum participants post in the Lounge15 – and quite a number of regulars post in the Lounge area exclusively.16 What makes this domain different from others? First of all, unlike Science or Politics it does not have any correspondence to a section in the paper. It lends itself more easily to being constructed around the interests of the forum participants. Second, the name itself suggests that it is an area in which to hang out and feel comfortable. It does not deal with anything in particular, any topic has a chance to be picked up (but will also be dropped easily). Third, many of the discussions in the Lounge are self-involved. There are threads with titles like Perlen (“pearls”) or Zitronen (“lemons”), devoted to the highs and lows of the forum, as well as threads about how to lead a good discussion. The most active threads, however, are rather erratically called Tja (a discourse particle, roughly corresponding to well) and Stammtisch (the word for a table reserved for regular customers in a German pub). Postings in Tja are very different from the posting in Example 4 discussed above. They are much shorter, with incomplete sentences, and sometimes consist of only minimal responses like tja or hm. Posting frequency is much higher than in any other area. These characteristics indicate that participants are continually scanning the Lounge for new postings and respond to them. Unlike in a chatroom, participants cannot know who is reading the thread unless that person makes a contribution to it. In Example 5 we see a sequence from Tja in which brigitte introduces a new topic (ach is a discourse particle that can indicate topic shifting) and in which she comments on a prior posting by Pallas, addressing Pallas directly, using a second person pronoun (Du). Pallas’s immediate response Tja … is the verbal equivalent to a shrug and also an insider play on words, since Tja is the title of the thread. The two postings are adjacent and occur within a minute, which means that there is no need for Pallas to indicate that his posting is a response to brigitte’s. 15. The exception are participants who use the Debatte for playing online Scrabble in the Games area. They do not just not post in the Lounge, they do not post anything in thematic areas like Politik or Kultur either. 16. One of the Lounge regulars ironically referred to another participant, who seemed totally unaware of topics that were discussed outside the Lounge, as a “lazy lounge-only poster.” The comment was made in a Lounge thread, of course (Stammtisch, post 54054).

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Example 5. From: Zeit-Debatte >> Lounge >> Tja brigitte - 28. May 2003 10:07 (Tja, #91364) ach und Pallas - Du hattest schon witzigere Pallas - 28. May 2003 10:08 (Tja, #91365) Tja ... Translation of Example 5 into English: brigitte - 28. May 2003 10:07 (Tja, #91364) ah and Pallas – you’ve had funnier Pallas - 28. May 2003 10:08 (Tja, #91365) Well ...

With many participants monitoring the Lounge area and specifically the Tja discussion, it is inevitable that multiple postings will be sent to the server at the same time. The equivalent in a conversation would be an overlap, which interlocutors would notice immediately, but in an online setting it is more difficult to recognize an overlap, as the software will automatically sequence all postings. Example 6 illustrates how participants deal with this situation: Example 6. Zeit-Debatte >> Lounge >> Tja everyone – 27. May 2003 9:47 (Tja, #91251) Gestern war die Nacht der Naechte: Matrix, 4 Filme. TheWitch – 27. May 2003 9:47 (Tja, #91252) oh, ich dachte gerade Du würdest das sofort erkennen Oh. Asche auf mein Haupt ... Das hätte ich wirklich erkennen müssen. Ich bin wohl etwas unaufmerksam derzeit! everyone – 27. May 2003 9:49 (Tja, #91253) Wir verstehen das. brigitte – 27. May 2003 9:45 (Tja, #91254) Matrix, 4 Filme. wie 4 Filme? iich verstehe das nicht TheWitch – 27. May 2003 9:55 (Tja, #91255) *misstrauisch guck* TheWitch – 27. May 2003 9:55 (Tja, #91256) X



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Translation of Example 6 into English: everyone – 27. May 2003 9:47 (Tja, #91251) Last night was the nights of nights: Matrix, 4 movies. TheWitch – 27. May 2003 9:47 (Tja, #91252) oh, I thought you would realize this at once Oh. Mea culpa ... I should really have realized that. I guess I am a little inattentive! everyone – 27. May 2003 9:49 (Tja, #91253) We understand. brigitte – 27. May 2003 9:55 (Tja, #91254) Matrix, 4 Movies. how 4 movies? ii don’t understand TheWitch – 27. May 2003 9:55 (#Tja, 91255) *looking skeptical* TheWitch – 27. May 2003 9:55 (#Tja, 91256) X

In Example 6, post 91251 everyone brings up the topic of the movie The Matrix. He says that he has seen all four Matrix movies (a remark that is bound to create surprise because there were only three Matrix movies at the time). The next posting, by TheWitch, has the same time stamp (9:47), that is, it cannot technically be construed as a response to post 91251. It is also ruled out linguistically as a response: This posting begins with a quote from a previous message, set off by smaller font (not reproduced here for technical reasons) and indentation (oh, ich dachte gerade …). This format is a common topic identifier in the Zeit-Debatte, particularly in the fast-paced threads that characterize the Lounge. Note that the topic identifier is not integrated into the sentence; a sequence from a previous posting is copied and pasted and then formatted in a way that makes the topic identifier stand out clearly. The last line of the posting in 91252 is in italics. Italics is commonly used to distance oneself from a statement, often ironically. The next posting, by everyone, is an ironic response to TheWitch’s posting. Note that everyone also uses italics, thereby creating cohesion merely through his choice of font. The next posting, by brigitte (post 91254), comes 6 minutes later and shows the three-layered format used by TheWitch before: The first line is set off in the topic indicator format (she returns to the topic of the four Matrix movies), the second line is in the regular format, and the third line is in italics, relating to the ironic

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remarks in italics by TheWitch and everyone. Brigitte indicates that she does not quite understand what everybody is talking about (given that there are only three Matrix movies), and one might expect that the next posting is an answer to her question (wie 4 Filme?). However, the next posting, by TheWitch (post 91255), doesn’t clear up the situation for her. Thematically, this posting could be construed as a comment on the one immediately preceding it. Using an inflective, TheWitch expresses disbelief – but disbelief at what? At the fact that brigitte doesn’t get everybody’s remark on four Matrix movies? There is technical as well as linguistic evidence that TheWitch’s posting actually refers back to everybody’s posting in post 91253: The technical evidence is that 91254 and 91255 bear the same time stamp. It is virtually impossible to read, write, and send a response to somebody else's message within a minute. But just to be on the safe side, TheWitch posts another message right away: X, short for cross, is a marker used to indicate that two postings have crossed, resulting in a sequential order that may cause confusion and ambiguity. By posting her X comment right away, TheWitch makes it clear that her previous posting, 91255, is a response to post 91253 (not to the adjacent post 91254). In terms of conversational analysis, the X comment can be considered a genre-specific form of self-initiated repair. This behavior is in line with results from a study by Schönfeldt and Golato (2003), who found that participants in chatroom conversations adapt practices from ordinary conversations to the online setting.17 It is no real surprise that participants in a discussion forum apply these mechanisms as well. Another method of self-repair is to go back and modify one’s posting (a feature generally not available in chatrooms and certainly not available in oral discourse). In the Debatte, this option is available within 30 minutes after sending a message. If, for example, TheWitch wanted to rule out that her posting in 91255 could be construed as an answer to post 91254, she could go back and delete or modify it. Although participants often correct typos in their postings, they do not often use the correction function to erase sequencing errors. One reason why this procedure is not used as often as the X comment is that it can set off a whole cascade of new corrections (if a posting is modified, the next posting may not make any sense any more and may then have to be modified as well). Self-corrections are difficult to document because they do not leave a trace. A posting that is deleted will be automatically marked with a stamp indicating by whom it was deleted, but a posting that has been modified does not get stamped modified.18 Summing up, the Lounge seems to be characterized by the mindset of oral discourse that is usually ascribed to chatrooms. Threads are not topic-specific, 17. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this article to me. 18. Only moderators are expected to indicate that they edited a posting.



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within a thread local topics change quickly, and participants juggle a number of topics at the same time, contributions are short, sentences are not complete, participants negotiate which speaker has the floor. Posting frequency is high and participants can expect to receive a reply to their messages, even if it is just the Lounge-specific minimal response Tja. At the same time participants make extensive use of graphic code and netspeak conventions: A special format is used to indicate the topic (but it is not integrated into the sentence), italics are used to express irony or to draw attention to a statement, overlaps caused by time lags are explicitly commented on (X), and netspeak conventions like non-standard spellings (iich) and inflectives (*misstrauisch guck*) are used to express what would otherwise be conveyed through nonverbal channels.19 Thus, the markers of written discourse that we find in the Lounge are very different from the ones in more information-oriented topic areas, and the markers of oral discourse are not quite those that we find in chatrooms. Nevertheless, what can be observed is a shift towards more conceptually oral communication, but it is firmly embedded within the structure of a public and non-transitory platform. Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer, initiator and first moderator of the Zeit-Debatte, pointed out to me (p.c.) that once an online community is established, participants will be interested in individualized communicat­ion.20 When the publishers of the Debatte switched to new discussion forum software in 2000, Lorenz-Meyer ensured that it had an instant messaging tool, which allowed participants to engage in private one-on-one communication. According to an informal survey among participants of the Debatte, this tool is used extensively, but it does not replace threads like Tja and Stammtisch in the Lounge. Clearly, these threads are not makeshift outlets for one-on-one communication. Even when a chatroom was added to the Debatte, the popularity of Tja was not diminished. One cou